Historic power trio leads way, guiding economy on prosperity path

They are the three women ­steering the nation’s economic course, a triumvirate of power not afraid to push back and make tough decisions.

Productivity Commission chief Danielle Wood, Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock and Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers

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They are the three women ­steering the nation’s economic course, a triumvirate of power not afraid to push back and make tough decisions.

The optics of authority have been transformed by the fact that both the Reserve Bank and the Treasury are now led by women.

On Tuesday, Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson attended her first RBA board meeting, ­replacing former secretary Steven Kennedy and ­shifting the gender ratio 2:1 in favour of women. That’s six women and three men setting our interest rates.

Ms Wilkinson’s name goes on our banknotes alongside ­Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock’s signature, marking a first for the nation.

As chair of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood on the same day released an agenda-setting blueprint for a “growth mindset” ahead of the government’s productivity roundtable next month.

These women like to eliminate the hype but there was no avoiding the magic of the moment when Ms Wilkinson, appointed just last month, joined Ms Bullock and Ms Wood, who have been in their posts since 2023, for a historic photograph.

All three of them are economists chosen by the Albanese government, and each is the first woman to hold their top job.

“It feels good!” the Reserve Bank governor said as she stood in the foyer of the central bank in Sydney.

“It feels good that we’ve got so many senior women in economic policy … and look, we’re standing on shoulders of people who went before us.”

Ms Wood added: “I think it was inevitable eventually those economic glass ceilings would crack … it is certainly a good news story that we see many of those break at the same time. I hope it’s not a flash in the pan.”

Indeed.

Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock, Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson and Productivity Commission chief Danielle Wood, at the Reserve Bank office in Sydney. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers

They reckon there are many more on the way up, even in a profession – economics – where about 70 per cent of practitioners and students are male.

“I can see a lot of fantastic women in the pipeline … I hope it means structural change,” said Ms Wood, at 45 the youngest of the trio.

Ms Bullock too said there were many more women coming up the ranks but added “we need to do a better job of selling” economics to young women.

“There’s a big confidence gap with girls,” she said. “They don’t feel that they are smart enough to do economics … perhaps there’s maths involved, and they feel they can’t do maths.

“The other thing is that economics tends to be associated with the financial markets and yes, some girls want to get into the financial markets, but many girls’ interests are in things like community and public service and health and environment. They don’t typically associate economics with those sorts of things, whereas they are very, very integral to them.”

Whether these three role models will convince more girls to study economics is yet to be seen but the public face of economics is changing, according to Ms Wood.

“I think just seeing these different faces shifts the tone somewhat and hopefully sends positive messages to young people and young women thinking of studying economics,” she said.

Ms Wood thinks the culture of the big policy agencies has shifted from “an intellectually aggressive culture, a quite competitive culture, to something that is still probing and still testing, but a bit more collaborative”. It’s not necessarily about there being more women but about a more diverse staff.

“At the Productivity Commission, where we used to only employ economists in policy roles, we now employ from a wider range of policy backgrounds.” she said.

Like the RBA governor, she said the shortage of women in economics was partly a marketing problem: “We have not yet done enough of a good job showing people the breadth of things you can do as an economist. If you care about environmental policy or health policy, if you care about helping grow the economy for the next generation, then economics is a great choice.”

Ms Wood has an economics honours degree from the University of Adelaide and a masters in economics and a masters in ­competition law from the University of Melbourne and said she had no problem being seen as a role model.

“There is nothing nicer for me than when young women come up and say that they have been positively influenced by me,” she said. “It brings a lot of joy to me to get that feedback from women. If I can help contribute in any small way to structural change in the profession, then I’m very happy. Bring it on. I mean, it’s not like anyone’s not asking me my views on productivity!”

When Ms Bullock, 62, joined the RBA in the mid-1980s, there were “barely any women at section-head level” and in 1996 she was the first women to reach deputy head level in a policy department. Today, 40 per cent of management roles at the bank and four of the seven executive committee positions are held by women.

Ms Bullock has worked at the RBA since she completed her economics honours degree at the ­University of New England. She also has a masters from the ­London School of Economics and said she opted for economics ­“because it gave me a lens on the world that I was looking at, I did think broadly”.

She admits that she was, in fact, good at maths, which helped. Four decades on she still enjoys the discipline but said: “It’s challenging at times … there’s a lot of uncertainty. That’s part of the challenge of economics; it’s not necessarily black and white.”

Do women do policy differently? “I’m not sure they do it differently,” Ms Bullock said. “My feeling is that (depending on) your background you bring a different perspective … different socioeconomic groups, also bring different perspectives.

“I grew up in the country. Some people grew up in the city. People grew up overseas.

“It’s very hard to generalise, but I think women sometimes have a different approach to leadership – not all the time, but sometimes you find women have a slightly different approach to collaboration, leadership, bringing diverse opinions in. So I think that helps.”

Ms Wood points to a US study that looked at differences in ­opinion between male and female economists. It found no difference on questions of methodology and economic theory but when value judgments were involved – for ­example, the size of government or the need for environmental policy or gun control – there were ­differences in approach.

Ms Wilkinson, 58, has spent most of her career in the public service in Canberra, after a stint at the RBA, and was previously head of Finance.

The Treasury secretary is part of a power couple in the national capital. Ms Wilkinson’s husband, David Gruen, heads the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The couple met at the Australian National University when she was an undergraduate studying for an honours degree in economics and he was doing his PhD.

Ms Wilkinson also has a masters of public affairs from Princeton in the US.

With so much girl power on display at the top is there a risk of pushback along the lines pursued by US President Donald Trump, who has attacked corporate DEI policies?

Ms Bullock doesn’t buy it and said she had not experienced any pushback.

“I think it (the rise of women) has been portrayed in a particularly negative way,” she said.

“It’s never been about promoting people simply because they are particular segment of the population. It’s always about what is the best person for the job, but it’s about thinking broadly about what attributes do you want in that job.”