MUSLIM women are subject to “misogyny and patriarchy” and are more likely to stay at home and speak little English, according to a bleak new report on integration in the UK.

The report by senior civil servant Dame Louise Casey, commissioned by then Prime Minister David Cameron, looked at “what divides communities and gives rise to anxiety, prejudice, alienation and a sense of grievance; and to look again at what could be done to fight the injustice that where you are born or live in this country, your background or even your gender, can affect how you get on in modern Britain.”

At the end of the year-long study, Casey accused the UK Government of serious failings and of not trying hard enough.

“Discrimination and disadvantage feeding a sense of grievance and unfairness, isolating communities from modern British society and all it has to offer,” she said.

This showed itself in “black boys still not getting jobs, white working class kids on free school meals still doing badly in our education system, Muslim girls getting good grades at school but no decent employment opportunities”

In what Casey said would be a “hard-to-read” report, she also talked about “high levels of social and economic isolation in some places, and cultural and religious practices in communities that are not only holding some of our citizens back but run contrary to British values and sometimes our laws.”

“Time and time again I found it was women and children who were the targets of these regressive practices. And too often, leaders and institutions were not doing enough to stand up against them and protect those who were vulnerable.”

Casey said the government needed to secure “women’s emancipation in communities where they are being held back by regressive cultural practices”.

She said fear of being labelled racist had led to a failure to call out “deeply regressive religious and cultural practices, especially when it comes to women” in some ethnic minority communities.

“I’ve met far too many women who are suffering from the effects of misogyny and domestic abuse, women being subjugated by their husbands and extended families,” she wrote.

“Often, the victims are foreign-born brides brought to Britain via arranged marriages. They have poor English, little education, low confidence, and are reliant on their husbands for their income and immigration status. They don’t know about their rights, or how to access support, and struggle to prepare their children effectively for school.”

In her report, she said cited claims that some Sharia councils had supported the values of extremists, condoned wife-beating, ignored marital rape and allowed forced marriages.

Problems within other faith groups were also highlighted, with extremists in the Sikh community disrupting weddings of mixed-faith couples, and children in some Jewish Orthodox communities being taught “that a woman’s role is to look after children, clean the house and cook”.

Casey criticised modern Christian churches “with activists seeking to ‘cure’ people of homosexuality”.

The report recommended a new major strategy and the introduction of an integration oath for new immigrants.

“Social mixing and interactions between people from a wider range of backgrounds can have positive impacts; not just in reducing anxiety and prejudice, but also in enabling people to get on better in employment and social mobility,” Casey wrote.

Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP who chairs an all-party parliamentary group on social integration, welcomed the report. “The fact people live parallel lives in modern Britain has been swept under the carpet for far too long,” he said.

Harun Khan, the Muslim Council of Britain’s secretary general, said the report was a “missed opportunity”.

He added: “We need to improve integration, and it needs to involve the active participation of all Britons, not just Muslims.”

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said it would “consider any lessons it may contain for Scotland as we continue to build the safer, stronger and more inclusive country we all want to live in”.