European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said Friday that there are still too few women in top jobs, and that the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem.
“There are still too few women in management worldwide, particularly in the economic and financial spheres, including central banks,” she said in an interview with French economics weekly Challenges.
Lagarde, the first female chief in the ECB’s history, lamented that the 19 eurozone central banks are all run by men, and that she and her German colleague Isabel Schnabel were the only women on the ECB’s 25-member governing council.
“That’s not how it should be!” she said.
Arguing for changes in the workplace, Lagarde said men should be encouraged to take paternity leave, and it should be granted to them for “longer periods than their current entitlement of a few days or weeks.”
Noting that the gender wage gap was still 13 percent