Bernie Sanders skips Women's Convention to visit Puerto Rico after backlash for him being chosen as keynote speaker

Critics argued a woman should have been selected for the opening slot

1,312 people signed a petition to remove Mr Sanders from opening the Women’s Convention (Getty Images)

Bernie Sanders has announced he will not be attending the Women’s Convention next week after the event sparked fierce criticism for choosing a man as the key speaker.

The former presidential candidate said he would be going to hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico where around one million citizens are currently without water and three million without access to power.

The Women’s Convention, a three-day event in Detroit which will take place from 27-29 October, is the first big event since January’s Women’s March which saw millions of people across the country protest against Donald Trump’s presidential victory.

The convention prompted outrage on social media after it announced the Vermont senator had been booked as its opening night speaker last week and critics argued a woman should have been selected for the slot.

"Sorry. I'm not attending a women's convention where the opening night speaker isn't a woman," one Twitter user said, sharing photos of Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar.

She added: "Perhaps consider these choices next time."

What’s more, 1,312 people signed a petition to remove Mr Sanders from opening the Women’s Convention.

The petition, created by Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft, said: "Bernie's voice, and the voices of ALL men, women, non-conforming, non-binary, cis, and transgender people who share a passion for the unity principles of the Women's March are needed and necessary voices for this movement.

"We want them at the convention. We want them listening. We want them leading. We want to learn from them, be challenged by them, changed and ignited by them. We even want them speaking at the Convention -- just not opening it. ... Having a man's face only continues the invisible presence, work and voices of women."

"I want to apologize to the organisers of the Women's Convention for not being able to attend your conference next Friday in Detroit," Mr Sanders said in a statement.

"Given the emergency situation in Puerto Rico, I will be traveling there to visit with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and other officials to determine the best way forward to deal with the devastation the island is experiencing."

He offered the group his “best wishes for a very successful conference” in his statement.

On Tuesday, the convention released a statement to say Mr Sanders would not be opening or headlining the convention and instead talking in a panel discussion. They announced Senator Debbie Stabenow would kick the night off.

"We know that it has been a painful week for women across the nation," the statement read. "We realise that we added to that pain when we announced Senator Sanders as a speaker at the Women's Convention and that our announcement gave the impression that he is occupying a central role at the convention."

A number of women will be speaking at the event – such as Democratic representative, Maxine Walters, community organiser and CNN contributor Sally Kohn, Piper Perabo, a political commentator, The Young Turks reporter Nomiki Konst, co-executive director of the Indivisible Project Leah Greenberg, Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan state Representative Stephanie Chang, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and even more.

The Women’s March co-president, Tamika Mallory, described Mr Sanders as a “fierce champion of women’s rights” and an individual who has boosted “female voices throughout his career of public service” in the initial announcement for the event and hailed him as the right candidate.

The convention has since said it was a shame Mr Sanders would not be able to join but said they totally understood why the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Puerto Rico is an imperative matter. A month since the category four storm swept the island with winds of up to 155mph, much of the country’s infrastructure remains in tatters.

The convention "aims to have participants leave inspired and motivated, with new connections, skills and strategies for working towards collective liberation for women of all races, ethnicities, ages, abilities, sexual identities, gender expressions, immigration statuses, religious faiths, and economic statuses," according to its press release.