of opportunity is about people as well as places, providing equal access to opportunity for everyone, everywhere.

The Purpose Coalition has developed a set of Purpose Goals to be the architecture of a truly level playing field, covering different life stages, as well as important elements like infrastructure and digital connectivity. Goal 14 is achieving equality through diversity and inclusion. That’s where gender equality comes in. It’s intrinsic to any comprehensive social mobility strategy but it’s also good for business - more diverse organisations make better decisions, adopting wider and more creative perspectives that reflect the communities they serve.

When I was International Development Secretary, it was clear to me that it was impossible to make a significant difference to the lives of the world’s poorest people if women - half the population - were locked out of those plans. There was also a stark reminder in research published last week in the Lancet that globally COVID has had a greater negative social and economic impact on women and girls than men, exacerbating disparities that already existed. As we look to a world beyond COVID, we need to build a ‘50-50 recovery’, one that implicitly recognises that gender equality is a foundation stone for a successful future Britain. On International Women’s Day, we can learn from what we’ve achieved so far. In 2017 as Minister for Women and Equalities, I took the Gender Pay Gap regulations through Parliament that now provide a transparent, consistent approach for employers to report their progress in the workplace.

Whilst there’s still a long way to go, we should recognise that much of the headway we’ve made on gender equality in the UK has been facilitated by employers who have genuinely challenged themselves to remove the barriers that exist for women at work. Yet it’s not just about getting in but also getting on. Recent figures show that 40% of UK FTSE 100 board positions are now

I’m proud to say that of the four companies which have both a woman CEO and Chair, three – Severn Trent, Pennon Group and Direct Line Insurance Group – have been working with the Purpose Coalition to help drive the levelling up agenda. Many of the companies we have partnered with are already helping to deliver a gender equal world, building workplaces where women can thrive. They work upstream in schools, using role models and real-life experience to widen aspiration, demonstrating to girls that careers in tech or STEM subjects, for example, can be for them. They develop and train them, helping to fill a skills gap that is inevitable if only 50% of the population can be considered for job vacancies in any particular role. These leading employers recognise this must be supported by a range of policies that will attract women, enable them to flourish and retain their talents.

In particular, they have embraced the new ways of working that were anyhow further driven by the pandemic, reviewing their practices to ensure that hybrid working especially benefits their female employees, making it easier to combine work with caring responsibilities or have a better work-life balance. It’s a vital step because one clear message from gender pay gap data is that whilst the pay gap has narrowed dramatically for younger women at work, starting a family still means women’s careers often slow down or stall at that point compared to men’s. Harnessed effectively, routine hybrid working post pandemic could be a real stepchange in removing barriers and enhancing the ability of women to drive on with their careers. Only one in three leadership roles and about 25% of all executive committee roles are currently held by women. There are only eight women CEOs in the FTSE 100, and none from an ethnic minority group. That’s untenable in 21st century Britain. But in the same way that it has been business and employers taking steps to narrow the gender gap at entry level and earlier in careers, it’s now vital they recognise that hybrid working can be a crucial step to reducing it later in careers and at senior levels of their organisations. It sits alongside other important work on mentoring and allyship for women to progress in careers. We need a renewed push for gender equality in Britain. We all have a part to play and, alongside employers, there are lots of fantastic organisations that are part of a wider effort. Levelling up is about everyone, everywhere. It’s about changing the terms of trade for those sections of our society that don’t always operate on a level playing field when it comes to opportunity. Let’s make sure we put gender equality at its heart.

Working together we will drive equality of opportunityand measuring socio-economic background can help employers show their progress.

We saw it during the pandemic, when the poorest people and communities in our society experienced higher mortality rates, more long-term illness, and a greater negative impact on their children’s education from school shutdowns. Now, it’s an economic impact as the cost of living crisis grows, with the same communities on the front line, and local economies disproportionately hit by reduced disposable income. That’s the challenge of weak social mobility - advantage accumulates but so does disadvantage, and it’s why where you start in life tends to be where you stay. But the systematic nature of social mobility also means we can all play a role to help break this cycle of inequality of opportunity.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has rightly signalled the Government’s continued commitment to its 2019 manifesto promise of levelling up. Hopefully it’ll be clearer over the coming months how a Sunak Government intends to deliver on February’s White Paper with its 12 Levelling Up Missions. But the White Paper also acknowledged that beyond Government, businesses and others should individually and collectively take the reins more firmly on driving levelling up, referencing our work through the Social Mobility Pledge (at the heart of which is the Purpose Coalition). Through our work we’ve seen just what a difference employers can make on driving social mobility - in communities, for their own employees, working through supply chains and procurement and, as the cost of living challenge bites, supporting their customers. Britain invests billions of pounds every year on education and skills, with a focus on closing attainment gaps and huge amounts of data collected to track progress in schools. Yet problematically for a country trying to achieve equality of opportunity, we have no real measures of what then happens to people in the workplace. So, whatever an employer does to drive levelling up, measuring impact is crucial to make sure you’re having a real impact. And the most important levelling up measure for any employer starts with tracking the social mobility power of its own opportunities and the socio-economic background of its recruits and employees.

The good news is that work by the Government’s Cabinet Office, then developed by the Social Mobility Commission working with our Social Mobility Pledge team and others, means we know how to do this socio-economic measurement and what data to track. It’s more straightforward than you might think, and it’s already been successfully trialled by Government departments in 2019. Now we just need it to be adopted by employers in a wider Britain, and it’s probably the single most important measurement we’ll need to make sure we level up Britain. That’s what the Equality of Opportunity Coalition is aboutbringing together private and public sector organisations which have committed to tracking their employee socio-economic diversity. They’re sharing their experiences, their know-how and ideas and are backed up by a growing number of cross-party MPs in Parliament who are applauding the steps these British employers are taking to track the levelling up impact their opportunities have on communities.

A wide range of organisations, covering over 300,000 employees and rapidly growing, have already joined the Equality of Opportunity Coalition, from the Co-op Group to law firm Shoosmiths, with bp, UK Power Networks, and the BBC all coming on board. Public sector employers such as universities like the University of Derby and Staffordshire University, St George’s University NHS Trust, or local authorities such as Essex County Council and South Kesteven County Council are also now starting to track their socio-economic diversity. Some Coalition organisations, such as the BBC, have challenged themselves with targets for how much they want to improve their numbers over the coming years. With the support of the major accountancy bodies such as ICAEW and CIPFA we are getting the word out and about to employers far and wide.

Many of the early adopter employers are finding out they’re more of an engine of social mobility than they had previously realised. Others are finding they may have further to go, but the fact they are tracking progress demonstrates an authenticity and seriousness to achieving more which drives real respect. For would-be employees, seeing an employer that shares their values is increasingly a precursor to them joining the organisation. And, of course, for a wider country that is determined to see a fairer, levelling up Britain, businesses taking on that responsibility for driving change and actively measuring their social mobility impact is exactly what people want to see and hugely welcomed by them. What gets measured gets done, and we’ll get more done working together. If we can better understand the socio-economic makeup of our workforce, we can tackle inequality and drive social mobility more effectively. If we can see more employers come together through the Equality of Opportunity Coalition then working together, we’ve a real chance to break the cycle of inequality of opportunity. That’s why measurement matters so much.