Women ruling the central banks

Women have become uniquely well represented throughout Southeast Asia’s central banks. They account for almost two- thirds of managerial staff in the Philippines, and at least half in Indonesia,

Thailand and Malaysia. That compares with much lower figures at their developed-world peers. There were 12 central banks led by women, compared with 19 in 2014 when Janet Yellen took over as head of the US Federal Reserve.

Some notable central bank governors:

Janet L Yellen

She took office as chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in February 2014, for a four-year term ending in January 2018. Yellen asserts her power by way of plain sentences and easy logic, making it easy to forget that the Yale- and Brown-educated economist is perhaps the world’s top market-mover

Elvira Nabiullina

Elvira Nabiullina became governor of Russia’s central bank in June 2013. She has been named the best Central Bank Governor in Europe in 2016 by the international financial magazine, The Banker. In recent months, she has helped to make a bad situation better, which is saying a lot when it comes to a government office and Russia

Zeti Akhtar Aziz

She was governor of Malaysian central bank from 2000 to 2016. Many hailed her 16-year tenure as a triumph for gender diversity in Southeast Asia. She led the team on exchange control during the

peak of the Asian financial crisis and became deputy governor afterwards. Euromoney described her as “cool, intellectual, and respected for toughness as a regulator”

Tarisa Watanagase

She was the governor of the Bank of Thailand between 2006 and 2010. One of her contributions was the modernisation of the country’s payment system, which she spearheaded in the early 1990’s.  

Thailand’s Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system the first of its kind in Southeast Asia

Gill Marcus

She was the governor of South African central bank from 2009 to 2014, first woman to hold the position. In 2010 she said, “Developing countries are more conscious of women’s emancipation – we’ve all got better statistics in relation to gender than in the developed world”