She was heavily involved in promoting equal opportunities for women on a national and international level.

With the support of a Mary Macarthur scholarship for working women, she read economics and politics at Ruskin College in Oxford.

On 27 February 1978 she was elevated to a life peerage as Baroness Lockwood, of Dewsbury in the County of West Yorkshire.

She received four honorary doctorates and was President of the Yorkshire Arthritis Research Campaign.

She was also a member of Soroptimist International, a group working to advance the status of women and was a patron of the Born in Bradford research project.