دانلود رایگان مقاله جنسیت و بانکداری مرکزی

Abstract

Female Central Bank chairs represent but a tiny minority. To understand why, this article analyzes socio-economic 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. This hypothesis is based on an empirical analysis showing 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.

5. Conclusion

Comparatively to the corporate boards, the gender of the Central Bank's chair has not so far been a subject of academic work. The contribution of this study to the literature on gender and monetary policy is to provide a deep insight of the female's under-representation among Central Bank chairs over the world, and to describe the way they resolve the inflation/output trade-off relatively to their male counterparts. To this aim, we have built a unique data set compiling information about female Central bank chairs since 1949. Our sample is larger and more recent than previous studies, and its originality lies in the fact that we included developed and emerging countries. Of course, there are other available data sets but they are incomplete or display some errors (misunderstandings about persons, confusions between Central Banks and national commercial banks). From the data compiled, we identified 56 female Central Bank chairs, i.e. a very small minority. By using various international data about socio-economic indicators (level of human development, gender gaps) and socio-political characteristics (religion, traditions, political representation, political organization, geographical location), we found that: the female Central Bank chairs appointment was not influenced by the countries’ level of human development; female under-representation, as Central Bank chairs, seems to result from tradition, religion and to the inequality gap with men, which is globally prevalent in societies.