The study also found a third of men said they feared being accused of ‘inappropriate touching’, compared to just 13 per cent of females. 

Nearly half of the men surveyed (46 per cent) said they’d be afraid of removing a woman’s bra to place a defibrillator properly.

The survey of 1,000 UK adults for St John Ambulance found that women were less likely to receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in public than men. 

According to the British Heart Foundation, performing CPR and using a defibrillator can more than double a person’s chances of survival in the instance of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. 

Jordan Davison, a community experience manager at St John Ambulance, said: “Our message to people is that it is always better to do something than nothing in these circumstances.

“Regardless of gender, when it comes to CPR, every ‘body’ is the same, the technique is the same, and everyone deserves the best possible chance of survival.”

In Australia, research conducted by the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute and Ambulance Victoria found that just 5 per cent of women who had a cardiac arrest received defibrillation from a bystander, compared with 10 per cent of men between 2020-2021.