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Luci Ellis, a Reserve Bank assistant governor, just spoke at the ACT launch of the Women in Economics Network in Parliament House in Canberra.

The topic of her speech was “women in the economy and in economics,” and she made some fascinating points about the gender divide in Australia’s workforce.

During the Q&A session, when talking about the reasons why some professions were dominated by men or women, she was asked by a young woman working in Treasury how the RBA was teaching all of its staff – both men and women – that everyone would benefit from a gender-diverse workforce.

Ellis replied by saying people needed to understand that diversity was actually about merit selection, because no one could honestly believe that 90% of the talent in economics was male.

She also wondered if it was a good thing for society that finance was still dominated by men.

Maybe funds management should be reconstructed as a ‘caring profession’, so we’re caring for peoples’ money.

It drew laughter from the mainly female audience but she persisted.

I’m actually serious with that proposal [more laughter], because I think how we socially construct these things is really important.

It’s a great point.