Economics viewpoint The quiet takeover by women really matters

Rachel Reeves is rightly proud of being the first female chancellor of the exchequer, and she is far from alone at the heights of economic policymaking.

- Heather Stewart

Rachel Reeves is rightly proud of being the first female chancellor of the exchequer, and she is far from alone at the heights of economic policymaking.

At a Westminster thinktank event last week about whether Labour is still a "mission-led government", one of the most striking things was not the panel's answer, which you can probably guess, but that it was made up of three women, and one token man.

The Institute for Government's director, Hannah White, was joined by its chief economist, Gemma Tetlow, and the new, no-nonsense director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Helen Miller - as well as Stephen Bush of the Financial Times.

Elsewhere, the Resolution Foundation is run by Ruth Curtice, a former Treasury economist. Rain Newton-Smith, another economist, has the task of repairing the CBI's reputation as its director general. Two of the four deputy governors of the Bank of England are women - as are the leaders of a number of powerful unions.