Gender and central banking

Abstract

Female Central Bank chairs represent but a tiny minority. To understand why, this article analyzes socioeconomic and socio-political characteristics of the countries where women have chaired Central Banks. Then, it suggests that gender differences in preferences as regards monetary policy goals may have some influence. An innovative econometric methodology, which does not require estimating all the structural and preference parameters of a monetary model, but only how men and women"s parameters differ, is developed to test this hypothesis. The results show that female Central Bank chairs focus more than their male counterparts on achieving the price stability goal. This means, then, that women are more resistant than men to political pressures. Finally, it concludes that gender differences in degree of conservatism may be an explanatory factor in female underrepresentation in the Central Bank chairs.

Engendering Macroeconomic Theory and Policy

“…Regardless of factors influencing monetary policy, such as financial liberalization, there are likely to be gender-differentiated effects on employment, consumption, and children's wellbeing with resulting feedback effects on growth. Only a handful of papers have explored the impact of contractionary monetary policy on gendered outcomes (Braunstein and Heintz 2006;Tachtamanova and Sierminska 2009;Seguino and Heintz 2012) while two papers explore the relationship between gender representation on monetary policy committees and the conduct of monetary policy (Diouf and Pépin 2016;Masciandaro, Profeta, and Romelli 2016). Braunstein and Heintz (2006) were pioneers in this research.…”

“…In terms of the conduct of monetary policy, Diouf and Pépin (2016) and Masciandaro, Profeta, and Romelli (2016) find evidence that gender diversity in central bank boards and chairs affects the conduct of monetary policy and hence macroeconomic outcomes. Greater relative female representation on central bank boards is inversely associated with inflation rates and money growth.…”

“…Greater relative female representation on central bank boards is inversely associated with inflation rates and money growth. Diouf and Pépin (2016) suggest that because women central bankers are more concerned with price stability than their male counterparts, they are a) more resistant than men to political pressures, and b) this could explain the underrepresentation of women as central bank chairs. These papers add to our knowledge of the role of gender in shaping key macroeconomic institutions.…”

Central Bankers as a Sociological Object: Stakes, Problems and Possible Solutions

“…Among these 26 chairwomen, 24 were appointed after 2005 and 22 after 2008, indicating still very small and insufficient progress since the crisis. There are so far very few studies on the long-neglected question of gender diversity in central bank governance and of the factors relating to women's (under-)representation, their policy implications and macroeconomic outcomes (Diouf and Pépin 2017;Farvaque et al 2011;Masciandaro et al 2015). Furthermore, these quantitative studies, based on sample populations of chairwomen too small to produce generalisable findings, don't allow us to perceive the complex mechanisms of exclusion and their consequences regarding gender inequality.…”

A textual Taylor rule: estimating central bank preferences combining topic and scaling methods

“…Schonhardt-Bailey (2013) shows that hallway conversations as well as explicit deliberation allows central bankers to in uence and persuade their colleagues. Finally, gender may also play a role with female members holding more Hawkish preferences than their male counterparts (Diouf and Pépin, 2017).…”