ECB to double number of women in top positions

The European Central Bank, under fire for being largely a men's club, plans to double the number of women in its top ranks, executive board member Joerg Asmussen said Thursday. "By the end of 2019, we want 35 percent of our middle management and 28 percent of our upper management to be women," Asmussen told the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The ratio currently stands at 17 percent and 14 percent respectively, the newspaper noted. While the number of women and men who work at the ECB is roughly equal overall, in management it is almost exclusively men who hold the positions of power, but Asmussen said he is convinced the situation must change. "Decisive for the success of such a transformation is a change in mentality of the ECB's current leaders," he said. Only two women have ever sat on the ECB's decision-making governing council. But the body, which currently has 23 members, is completely male at present. It was for that reason, that the European parliament openly opposed the nomination of Luxembourg's Yves Mersch to the executive board at the end of last year.