As local government secretary Michael Gove acknowledged recently, the real ‘levelling up action' is going to happen in places like the North.
Local government should be leading any such action. But to truly level up, we need to foster trust, collaboration and better policy making. Local government should focus on strengthening its relationship with the communities it serves – including reflecting and representing their diversity.
This International Women's Day offers a great opportunity for local government to take a moment to reflect on the scale of ambition needed to make itself better representative of the people it stands for. Right now, the majority of local councillors across England are white, aged 60 and above, and men. Based on the rate of change between the 2019 and 2021 elections, we would not expect to see gender parity among local councillors until 2077. Women make up just over a third of local councillors in England, and there are even fewer women council leaders; just over one in five.
Of course, while elected councillors set policy priorities, the day-to-day work of a council is undertaken by a team of officers and a wider range of employees. Among this group we see a different picture; over three quarters of council employees (including roles such as care workers and teachers) are women. This compares to just over half of civil service employees (including government departments, devolved governments and arms-length bodies) overall. But as with so many industries, this does not translate to the upper echelons, with women making up just under a third of council chief executives in England.
Here in the North, we are beginning to see progress, albeit at a snail's pace. England's first woman metro mayor was elected in Yorkshire in 2021 and 50% of directly elected mayors in the North are women, as are 50% of the elected police and crime commissioners in the region.
At a local council level, we also see a slightly higher proportion of women councillors in the North; almost four in 10 councillors in the region are women. Aligned with this, there is a higher proportion of women in leadership positions in compared to England overall; three in 10 councils in the North have women leaders and just over one in three of the region's local authorities are led by women CEOs. While promising, there is still a long way to go in the North and in England more broadly to tackle the gender gap in local government.
Many places across England are missing some big opportunities, and there is slow progress at every level. More can and should be done to address the gender balance at a local and regional level, and devolution can play a big part in this. In Wales, for example, equality was incorporated into devolution legislation, resulting in a world first 50:50 gender representation in the Welsh Assembly in 2003. And yet, subsequent elections in Wales have resulted in the gender balance tipping back towards a higher number of men in power – demonstrating that gender parity needs to be continuously worked toward and maintained. Nor can we rely on voluntary action by individual political parties, although of course commitments on an individual party basis, such as selection process reform, would be welcomed. We need sustained and structural commitment to change in order to make any meaningful difference: for example, embedding gender parity in all devolution deals as a core principle would be a good starting point.
This international Women's Day shares a similar mission with the core ‘levelling up' mission: breaking biases and put an end to inequalities – and this must include gender ones. For this to happen, and to deliver real policy innovation in places like the North, local and regional government should commit to shift the dial and become more representative. And levelling up should turbocharge the rate of change.
Erica Roscoe is a senior research fellow at IPPR North. She tweets @erica_roscoe.
