Janet Yellen’s appointment as US Federal Reserve chair this year was hailed as another step toward gender equality. How about a central bank where women outnumber men?
This is the Bank of Thailand (BOT), which runs monetary policy in Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy and has 31 women among its 60 top executives. Thailand named its first female central bank governor in 2006 and its first female assistant governor back in 1966.
The secret of the bank’s success in gender equality starts at the lowest level and goes back decades.
Illustration: Tania Chou
Tarisa Watanagase, governor from 2006 to 2010, was a beneficiary of a scholarship program to study economics abroad that began in 1960. Of the 85 interns accepted for the Bank of Thailand’s three-month summer program this year, 58 were women.
“My dad said the BOT would be my best option because it had the best opportunities for women,” said Roong Mallikamas, who joined the bank in 1995 after completing a doctorate in economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In October, she became head of the bank’s macroeconomic and monetary policy department.
The half-century policy of hiring and promoting women has given the Thai institution a head start over more powerful central banks in developed nations. The US Federal Reserve has two women, including Yellen, on its board and two female presidents out of 12 among the regional Fed banks. The Bank of Japan has one woman on its nine-member policy board, while the European Central Bank has one woman on its six-member executive board and two on its 24-seat governing council.
The Bank of England (BOE) named a second woman to its nine-member Monetary Policy Committee this year. Before their appointments, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said that a gender imbalance previously was “striking” and the BOE needs to nurture female economists “through the ranks.”
Of the 3,617 employees at the Bank of Thailand, 54 percent are women.
Having women in senior roles in central banks “is important to have a diversity of opinion,” said Caroline Freund, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former World Bank economist.
“Otherwise there is a danger of ‘groupthink,’ where they may miss important risks because they all come from the same backgrounds, hold the same priors, and examine the same data,” she said.
Tarisa, who has a doctorate in economics from the University of Washington, was responsible for devising and implementing financial sector and supervisory reforms after the 1997 crisis, and modernized the nation’s payment system. She imposed capital controls in 2006 to rein in a surging baht and fight flows.
“Women have played an important role in the Thai central bank for more than half a century now, becoming role models and drawing more women to the central bank,” said Pongsak Luangaram, who teaches monetary policy at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and wrote a book on the Bank of Thailand. “It came to be regarded as a prestigious place to work, and began to attract the cream of economics graduates.”
Chulalongkorn University, where diplomas are still presented by the royal family, says 69 percent of students enrolled in its English-language undergraduate program in economics this year are women.
At the central bank, more women than men hold doctorates — 52 percent, up from 36 percent in 2004.
“Education is really key to the achievement of women in Thailand,” said Kesara Manchusree, president of the Stock Exchange of Thailand, and the third woman to hold that position. “There are also no social expectations that women should stay home to raise kids after marriage.”
Suparb Yossundara joined the Thai central bank as early as 1947, rising to the position equivalent to assistant governor in 1966, the highest possible at the time as the governor and his deputies were appointed by the government.
Tanya Sirivedhin became the first female deputy governor in 1998.
“It’s not at the central bank alone; there are lots of women working at banks and other financial institutions also,” said Navaporn Reuangsakul, who studied economics at the University of California at Los Angeles with a scholarship from the BOT, and returned to work there for 18 years. “So it’s more about our society and the environment in our country that are supportive for women to work and advance their careers.”
Other central banks in Southeast Asia have also promoted women to top posts. Zeti Akhtar Aziz is in her 14th year running Bank Negara Malaysia, where women make up 38 percent of senior management, while in the Philippines, three of six assistant deputy governors are women.
“The inclusion of women in the financial and economic mainstream is no longer an option,” Zeti said in Bangkok in July. “It’s a prerequisite for our sustained economic progress.”
Asia’s more advanced economies have been slower to tap the skills of women. The Bank of Korea appointed its first female deputy governor last year, while Sayuri Shirai is the sole woman on the policy board of the Bank of Japan.
Around the world, 19 out of 190 central banks and monetary authorities were run by women as of Oct. 6, including Russia, Ukraine, South Africa and Israel, according to Web site Central Bank News in Boulder, Colorado. Most are in smaller economies such as the Seychelles, Honduras and Cyprus.
“Many developing countries do not have fully flexible exchange rates,” Freund said. “This means the central bank plays a much less important role in the economy because monetary policy flexibility is limited.”
Equality in the central bank does not necessarily translate into equal opportunities elsewhere. In many Southeast Asian countries, women face challenges in accessing educational, economic and political opportunities, according to the World Economic Forum. In the region, only the Philippines made the top 10 of the forum’s gender gap index of 142 countries this year. Thailand comes in at 61, while Malaysia is 107.
In politics, Thailand has gone backward in gender equality since the military coup in May. Former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra had three female ministers including herself, and women held 82 of the 492 seats in the lower house. Of the 220 seats in the new military-appointed National Legislative Assembly, 13 are women.
At the university level, the pipeline of female graduates keeps flowing: Last year, 134 Thai women enrolled in college for every 100 men, World Bank data showed.
Thailand, along with the Philippines and Indonesia, also has among the highest ratios of women in senior management positions — at least 38 percent, compared to a global average of 24 percent, according to a report by Grant Thornton International.
That is at least in part due to the strong family networks and affordable domestic help in Southeast Asia.
“I had a lot of family support for raising my child,” said Roong, 45, whose doctoral thesis was advised by Olivier Blanchard, now chief economist at the IMF. “There were lots of women at the BOT even when I joined. I sometimes wonder where the men are.”
Additional reporting by Anuchit Nguyen, Chris Blake, Supunnabul Suwannakij and Karl Lester M Yap
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry