National firm Eversheds (pictured) and northwest firm DWF have become the country’s first law firms to join a government scheme to publish gender equality data.

News that the two firms have signed up to the Home Office’s Think, Act, Report scheme follows a Legal Services Board announcement earlier this year that law firms must soon publish diversity data about staff, including age, race, disability, sexual orientation and socio-economic background.

Eversheds chairman John Heaps, who hosted the launch event for the scheme, said the new initiative aimed to improve awareness and understanding of workforce equality. It would bring about change through a flexible approach, he added, allowing employers to choose the measures that make sense for their business.

Tyrone Jones, DWF head of values and corporate responsibility, said: ‘Gender equality and reporting, shaped by doing the right thing and by the way we think and behave, is integral to our approach. We are in the process of publishing the composition of DWF's workforce, including the proportion of women in partnership as well as women’s access to training and development opportunities.’

Home Secretary Theresa May said: ‘Promoting equality of opportunity and equal treatment isn’t just the right thing to do – it’s also crucial to promoting growth. Better use of women’s skills could be worth £15bn to £23bn to our economy each year. And if women were setting up new businesses at the same rate as men we would have 150,000 more companies in the UK.’

A spokeswoman for the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: ‘Many women are still not getting equal pay with men even though they are doing equal or similar work. Pay transparency helps to reduce that gap and this new initiative is a step in the right direction.’