Sophie McKenna talks about the Power of Women campaign

“Unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet Jane, but I feel as though I know her because I talk about her all the time in the work that we do and from what people tell me she was a real force of nature and the stories that I hear about her work are just incredible.”

That work now lives on through Power of Women – POW – the campaign McKenna helps lead as Head of Campaign and Operations and which is becoming one of the region’s most distinctive voices on equality, aspiration and its future workforce.

“Essentially, Power exists to improve the lives of girls and women in Teesside,” she tells me in an office at Teesside University, where Jane worked.

“We’re very much rooted in Tees Valley. We may expand, but at the moment we’re very much focussed on making lives here better for girls and women.

“We do that mainly through education and engagement and speaking to the young people, speaking to women and using their voices to shape our work, including a core primary school programme, which often shocks people because they think, well, why primary school?

“But we hear a lot about secondary and how they’re a melting pot and there are so many issues – and yes, there are – but we believe, and the research also confirms, that we need to be working with young people because by age seven, those gender stereotypes really become ingrained and we form gender‑limiting beliefs.

“If we can work with young people in primary schools and hopefully start to combat some of those stereotypes and those limiting beliefs that we form, then we’ve got a chance to change things.

With that determination, we started in September going into the schools and working with the whole of the class to do a really fun session around gender equality, but also looking at the choices that you have as a young person and what your future might look like.

Sophie McKenna POW Head of Campaign and Operations Picture: SARAH CALDECOTT (Image: NQ)

“At the moment, I think the problem that we have is with stereotyping – it’s so ingrained in our society, in the media, in the toys we play with, in the clothes we wear, it’s almost subliminal.

“I’m a parent myself and I even find myself saying things and I have to correct myself. We say things to boys like ‘man up’, for example – that’s a prime example. It’s that everyday language that we would use which actually has connotations.”

She is clear there is more to do beyond the pupils, perhaps teacher training and parental work.

“We’re looking at how we can advance things going forward because I think it is so important to have the parents on board with what we’re doing for boys and for girls. We need men and men need equality just as much as women do – it’s not just a female thing.

“We did actually just work with girls initially, but then we changed after feedback from schools and we know see the full picture.

One of POW’s most powerful tools is its network of business volunteers and role models, and Sophie says she is trying to get as many role models signed up – relatable people who can tell their stories to primary and secondary pupils. The job they will do shouldn’t need doing, but it does, and Sophie is the person to make sure it succeeds helped by school leaders themselves, she tells me.

“We started to do some work in secondary because we were having schools coming to us and telling us they had a group of girls who were disengaged from learning and can’t see anything good about themselves. They had absolutely no confidence, so the schools asked if we could help.

“A lot of the time we go in with our role models and operate a coaching model. We do some one‑to‑one coaching, and get the role models to speak honestly about their experiences. That’s where it really lies – saying, ‘You can do this, just go for it and take the opportunity and have that confidence in yourself.’ The young people can really relate to that.”

‘You can’t be what you don’t see’ has become a touchstone for POW’s business engagement and Sophie McKenna is determined to make it as easy as possible for employers and professionals to get involved.

“It’s not a massive commitment,” she says.

“It’s not as though we’re signing up and saying you need to mentor this person for a year. You can literally take three hours out of your day and just come along for one event and speak to some young people about your job.

“It’s very low commitment and I always say to people, I’m not keeping an eye on who’s doing the most, just give your time, that’s brilliant for us and that’s all we’re asking for – just that one event. To be honest, we have our events in secondary school with maybe 20 women and two or three men that come along and support – we’re still building it up.”

“It’s really important that we have that male perspective and it isn’t just us going into schools and saying, ‘Power of Women – you can do anything you want’. You need to lean on the men in your lives that can support you and help you get there as well. It’s a really key message.

“I think the overall equality picture has got better, but all the research shows inequalities are still faced by women – more likely to be paid less than men, more likely to take on caring responsibilities, have poorer health outcomes. So it’s there in black and white. We’re not there yet.

Sophie McKenna POW Head of Campaign and Operations Picture: SARAH CALDECOTT (Image: NQ)

“It’s often so unconscious though, and so ingrained. That’s the challenge, isn’t it? It’s tackling almost the societal expectations that we have of what a female is and what a male is. Until we can tackle that and eradicate it, we won’t ever have full gender equality. I do think that girls are now propelling forward and we’ve definitely made waves in saying, ‘You can do what you want, you can achieve what you want’ – there is that belief,” she says.

“But sadly there just aren’t the structures a lot of the time to actually facilitate that.

“Obviously a female has a baby and then that sets you back, so then that’s your pay gap. They’re more likely to go part‑time, so they’re more likely to have a lower pension than the male counterparts, and they’re likely to be paid less because they’re working part‑time.”

“Then typically as well towards the end of the career, it’s that book‑end caring – more likely to care for elderly parents – and that responsibility just tends to fall on a woman.

“But there are certainly reasons to be hopeful, such as more provisions for men to take more paternity leave. I think a lot of men would have liked to have had more time off with their children and had that quality time too, to share that maternity leave.

“Hopefully that’s something we’re going to see a lot more of and a lot more companies following that approach, which could potentially help us with that pay gap as well.”

In all of POW’s work, the most powerful message is one that comes from the heart. Sophie has a 10‑year‑old son and a six‑year‑old daughter and says she can already see the differences between them.

“For my son, I think I worry the most around mental health because I think that’s such a big thing with boys, along with social media and the online world. He’s at the crux of growing up – he wants a mobile phone and I don’t want to give him one.

“It’s just a scary world. You worry about them being left out, but you also worry about having this phone and you know how curious children are, they can literally access anything. It’s just like ‘take this phone and see everything you’ve ever wanted to know about or look at’ – it’s just scary.

“So I really worry about that, but with my son, I’ll always tell him he can just ask me anything and he won’t be in trouble’.

“At this stage, they love each other and they hate each other,” she laughs.

“But I am very careful with my eldest. I almost feel like I’m probably more protective towards him as a boy than maybe I am towards my daughter, which is interesting. But I think the wider lesson is about positivity – that’s something that I really try to drum into my two – that you’ve got to have a really positive mindset.

Prof Jane Turner (Image: TU)

If they are saying ‘I don’t want to get up, I hate Mondays, I hate school’ well you can’t hate everything about school. So what do you like about it?

“I’m not saying I expect them to be happy all the time…. but the whole thing about Mondays I find really interesting – why do we hate Mondays? It’s just another day. Come on, we need to flip this. I’m really trying to get them to have that positive outlook on life and to advocate for themselves. With POW, that is a key part of the programme – around using your voice and having the confidence to speak up.

“You go through an education system where you have to listen to the teacher, you have to follow rules – and there’s nothing wrong with that,” she says.

“But I’m really trying to teach them to say it’s okay to challenge something. If you don’t like where you’re sat in the class, something as little as that, or you don’t agree with something, you can voice your opinion respectfully.

“I think that’s something we need to nurture more in order to ensure that young people have the best positive outcomes for themselves, especially children living in really disadvantaged areas where they might not always have the positive role models.

“We as an organisation really want to advocate for those young people, listen to their experiences, listen to their opinions and use that to shape our future programme,” she says.

“That’s where we’re on track to go for the next part of our aims and objectives. We really want to use child advocacy as part of shaping what we do in the future because we know that we could do so much.

“It’s almost like we have so much enthusiasm and so much energy for making a difference, but we want it to be really focused on what young people want and bring them along with us rather than just tell them, ‘This is our programme and this is what we’re doing.’ We want them to really be involved in shaping it. That’s how we will get the best results.”

Her own story is another powerful asset in her work.

She grew up in Brotton – a rural small village where she went to the local church school and her dad was a milkman.

“Everybody knew each other – I would never get away with anything because everyone knew my dad. I went to the local secondary school and that was like 500 kids in the school, so I got the shock of my life when I went off to college and there were all these people from Middlesbrough.

“I struggled, to be honest,” she says. “I didn’t enjoy college, but I was fairly academic and I think I had that instilled in me – the hard work and ‘you’ve got to work hard and do your best’. It was never about the results, but always about doing your best in everything.

“Right and wrong and fairness was always something I was passionate about, so I did law at university. My mum and dad were very good – they didn’t force anything onto us and they were very balanced. If I said something, they would always challenge me on it and say, ‘Well, look at the other side.’ I loved that.

-“I always took the opportunities – outwardly, I think I had a lot of confidence but maybe inside I struggled with a bit of self‑belief.

“I ended up working in a JobCentre and that set me off on this whole trajectory of social justice. It was the shock of my life that I met so many different types of people and I saw how other people lived, probably compared to my sheltered upbringing.”

“That set me on a path of ‘I’d like to give back and be a bit of a change‑maker’,” she says.

“I got to work with young people in care and did an amazing art exhibition that showcased their work. But then the job at POW came up and I was working in London a lot and really wanted to work locally, particularly with two young children – and I knew the challenges in the area.

“You can’t escape the headlines about where we live – we always seem to be the worst at something or the highest at something. We don’t tend to get the positives but we all know what an amazing place it is where we live and the people have such grit.”

As the Tees Valley economy pivots to net zero and new industries, Sophie is adamant that her work is not separate from the region’s investment story. “You can have the best education, but if you can’t speak to people, if you can’t have confidence in yourself, if you can’t speak up, then you will struggle,” she says.

“We call them soft skills and I just hate that term, because actually those are the power skills that hold everything up and really propel you. That’s how you’ll get into employment, that’s how you’ll be able to be resilient when the challenges come and handle whatever life throws at you – the knockbacks.

“I’ve got so many friends where they’ve gone through interview processes and it can be so soul‑destroying. But it’s about having that resilience to say, ‘No, I keep going, I keep applying. Build on it, take the constructive criticism and try to do it better’ That’s what we really need to create in young people now, particularly as we’ve got this mental health crisis in young people.”

For her, that loop between confidence, opportunity and mental health is central.

She tells me: “It’s so closely linked – the career opportunities, how far you feel you can progress. Then suddenly some kids just get stuck in a rut and think, ‘It’s not for me, I can’t do it, it’s not for me.’ So it’s about, at an early age, saying, ‘No, it is for you. You can do this.’”

In Tees Valley’s boardrooms and classrooms, that message is starting to land. The challenge now, Sophie suggests, is to make sure it reaches every child who needs to hear it – and every business ready to play its part.