In 2022, a group of local women heard about a new Combined Authority and saw an opportunity to promote better policies that work for women and girls. They formed the One Million Women and Girls campaign, aiming to ‘maximise the potential of women and girls in the North East’.  The new North East Combined Authority (NECA) was to cover seven local authorities (Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Sunderland) with a population of just over two million people – hence the campaign name.

The campaign took a cross-party approach and was unfunded in its early stages. Lots of us worked or volunteered in the voluntary and community sector but academics, public health specialists, grant-makers, students, councillors and retirees were also involved.

We thought it would be easier to influence how the Combined Authority worked when it was still being set up and we knew that politicians are in listening mode when seeking to be elected, so we set about lobbying the Mayoral candidates and the individual local authorities.

Rather than identify specific policies e.g. childcare, our asks focused on governance – we wanted lasting change with the needs of women and girls being understood and responded to in all areas of policy and programme development. We asked for: senior leadership to ensure buy-in; a comprehensive toolkit and methodology; a commitment to building intersectional gender competence and to collect and share data disaggregated by gender; concrete action on accountability and representation.

We also developed a set of pledges and met with all the Mayoral candidates, who each ‘pledged’ to:

1. Take practical steps to improve the lives of women and girls in our region.

2. Work with partners to ensure women and girls can access safe transport, can access housing, good quality jobs, training, and adult education.

3. Listen to women and girls from all communities and act on what they tell me/us to understand what they need / the barriers they face.

4. Put in place systems and structures to ensure equality for women and girls.

5. Explicitly consider the specific impact on women and girls of every policy / strategy we develop, seeking to maximize positive and mitigate negative impacts.

One local councillor took the pledges as a motion to North Tyneside council, this took off and by the election in May 2024 four of the seven authorities (North Tyneside, Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland) had adopted the pledges.

As well as lobbying the individual candidates, we also encouraged women to vote, using social and local media, activities with local women’s groups and a Debate with all the candidates, focusing on the issues that were important to women and girls.

350 people attended the Debate, chaired by a former BBC journalist. Attendees submitted questions on an area of NECA responsibility, giving us a sense of what women and girls were most concerned about and keeping the focus on regional rather than national issues. We live-streamed and recorded the event, re-sharing it on social media up to election day, so it was accessible to more people.