Gender and Central Banking

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. 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.