When Jenni Murray asks the questions, I expect snappy, knowledgeable answers. When she questions women who are brainy and of high economic stature, I expect the answers to be closely argued and illuminating. In the studio were Dr Anne Sibert, professor of economics at Birkbeck College, and Frances Cairncross, who worked on the Economist for 20 years. “How long,” she asked, “until there’s a female governor of the Bank of England?”  How long indeed, thinks I, pausing only for a millisecond to wonder if that should be “Governess” (a word I’ve always liked, though it sounds a wee bit Fifty Shades these days). Well, the answer is not in my lifetime. If I live to be 100, I shall never get to see a female governor of the Bank of England. Or the European Central Bank. Or the World Bank. Because the female is not yet born who wants to run a massive great bank and who knows she wants it early enough to make the push for it.  The only woman in the frame as first female governor is Rachel Lomax, of whom I’d never heard (despite the fact that she was deputy governor of the Bank). But we’ve heard of her now, because Evan Davis asked her if she’d take the job – for which she is spectacularly well-qualified – and she told him, “No.” At which he giggled. (He has got to stop that giggling on air.)  Sibert and Cairncross both said animatedly that Lomax would indeed have been a great pick for first woman governor. When asked “Who else, then?” they both said, “Erm” and “Well” and “Banking seems to be particularly bad at getting senior women into top jobs” and “It’s an industry where you have to work very long hours” (to which I say pish and tush – try running a country pub). Also: “Men do things after work and become friends.” Women do things too, of course, but perhaps not such blokey things as, say, dropping into lap-dancing clubs, which is how men get all the good jobs, apparently.  I don’t want to see a woman governor of the Bank of England because I think that “the culture” of banking could do with less macho aggression and more womany, cupcakey peacemaking. Anyone who remembers Margaret Thatcher’s ringing rhetoric knows that women are not generically soothers and shushers. She managed to bring discord where there was harmony so often it was always a wonder to me.  From the FT I have learnt that only a dozen of the 160 central banks in the world have a female governor. And – as one of Jenni Murray’s banking women told her – the banks that have women for governors tend to be in “Belarus, Angola, Samoa”. They didn’t hazard an explanation. But I long for one.  Does Christine Lagarde have the same problem as Englishwomen? She’s the very soignée Frenchwoman at the International Monetary Fund who has polished silver hair and silver jewellery whenever she talks to Paxo on Newsnight. (But you can find pictures of her on snarky French blogs popping into the Elysée with diamonds all a-glitter at her ears and neck, until she spots paparazzi, when she whips them off.)  Lagarde, who is as smart as paint, is the first woman managing director in the IMF’s history. But the IMF isn’t a central bank, is it? More like a payday loan outfit in the current climate.  It is a puzzle that women cannot take the same pleasure and satisfaction that men do in running vast organisations. Britain doesn’t even have enough women MPs – proportionally fewer women elected legislators than almost anywhere else. I have no idea how that can be changed, apart from forcing local associations to accept all-women shortlists. A nightmare idea. As bad as having quotas for women in boardrooms.  If the Cameron Government wants to kick-start a females-in-top-jobs revolution, there’s one thing he might manage, and it might work. Force Eton College to go co-ed, and give the girls the same sense of entitlement.
It&rsquo;s a mystery why so few run Britain&rsquo;s vast organisations &ndash; but there is a   solution.&thinsp;.&thinsp;.