A few years ago I participated in a central banking conference in NewYork. As I looked around the airless room, I noticed something striking: the seats were almost exclusively filled with dark male suits and sober white shirts, with barely a woman in sight.

This is not the first time I have felt in the minority. Early in my life I worked in Islamic regions of the world, where there were few women in public life. Later I was the FT bureau chief in Japan, where it was so novel to see a young woman in a position of authority that a kindly Japanese diplomat told me to put “Dr Tett” on my name cards, to avoid having to remind anyone that I was a “Miss”. It was great advice.

But what made this banking seminar so notable - and memorable - was that it occurred in NewYork, not Iran. And while the gender -imbalance that day was extreme, it was not that unusual: in two decades of reporting on central bank activity I have met very few senior women.