Gender and Monetary Policymaking: Trends, Drivers and Effects

This paper analyses the gender representation in monetary policy committees, offering three contributions. We propose the first index to evaluate the gender representation in monetary policymaking - i.e. the GMP Index – for... [ view full abstract ]

This paper analyses the gender representation in monetary policy committees, offering three contributions. We propose the first index to evaluate the gender representation in monetary policymaking - i.e. the GMP Index – for a sample of 112 countries as of 2015. Second, we investigate the drivers of gender diversity in monetary policy committees. Our results show that, besides legal (Common Law), religious (Orthodox), historical (French colony)  and socio-economic (female labour force) drivers, the gender representation is more likely to be relevant in countries characterized by a well-defined central bank governance, i.e. more independent central banks and less involved in supervision. Finally, we test whether gender diversity in central bank boards affects the conduct of monetary policy and hence macroeconomic outcomes. We find that gender diversity is inversely associated with inflation rates and money growth. The presence of women in central bank boards seems to be associated with a more hawkish approach to monetary policy making.