A/HRC/38/33 cent had been trained at 10 elite universities in those two countries.126 Much criticism since the Great Recession has focused on the increasing belief of economists from these leading universities that their profession is an almost natural science, based exclusively on mathematical models.127 62. Second, cultural diversity is also limited. As at 2017, among “B-level” staff (from division chiefs to department directors), 5.4 per cent are from sub-Saharan Africa, 4.8 per cent from East Asia and 6 per cent from the Middle East and North Africa.128 63. Third, only 25.2 per cent of “B-level” economists are women,129 including 3 of the 32 senior officials,130 and 3 of 24 Executive Directors, despite a commitment to enhance gender diversity at IMF. 131 While macroeconomics as a whole is a field dominated by men, 132 research suggests that this has significant effects on policy preferences,133 with female economists favouring Government-backed redistribution policies more than males.134 64. IMF might be expected to dismiss all of these considerations and insist that it is merely doing the job prescribed for it by its Articles of Agreement. However, issues of staff composition, hiring, incentives and training make a huge difference through their impact on internal culture and dominant thinking. Becoming pro-poor 65. Extreme poverty is abject, violates basic rights and is a political choice. IMF needs to move beyond seeing it as just another abstract item on a balance sheet. At present, the professional mindset of IMF staff sees its role as essentially technical, scientific and apolitical. The imagery often invoked by IMF staff is telling. In critical situations, they see themselves as emergency-room doctors, 135 implying the routine application of prescribed surgical interventions, with no time to consider alternative medical approaches. In surveillance mode, they see themselves as police, also implying that there are rigid rules to be followed. It has been said about IMF economists that “analyses based on numbers, models, and rules seem impartial and fair, they are a defence against accusations of politicized and unprofessional behaviour that can undermine bureaucrats’ authority as experts”.136 66. What is missing is an underlying ethical framework. Fiscal consolidation, for example, is not neutral; it can be elite-reinforcing, or it can be pro-poor, or much inbetween. The choices that are made reflect values, and the means of fiscal 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 18 Including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or the universities of Chicago, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge, and the London School of Economics. See A. Kentikelenis and L. Seabrooke, “The Politics of World Polity: Script-writing in International Organizations”, in American Sociological Review, vol. 82, iss. 5 (2017), pp. 1065–1092, table 2. Ha-Joong Chang, Economics: The User’s Guide (Bloomsbury, 2014); and P. Krugman, ���How Did Economists Get it So Wrong?”, The New York Times Magazine (2 September 2009). See www.imf.org/external/np/div/2017/index.pdf. Ibid. See www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/officers.htm. See www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/eds.aspx. J. Wolfers, “Why Women’s Voices are Scarce in Economics”, The New York Times (2 February 2018). See in general S. Lundberg, “The 2017 Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession”, American Economic Association, 6 December 2017; and “Women and economics”, The Economist (19 December 2017). A. May, M. McGarvey and R. Whaples, “Are Disagreements among Male and Female Economists Marginal at Best?”, Contemporary Economic Policy (vol. 32, No. 1, January 2014), pp. 111–132; and May, McGarvey and Kucera, “Gender and European Economic Policy”, pp. 162–183. E. Coburn, “Economics as ideology: challenging expert political power”, State of Power, (January 2016), p. 57. M. Barnett and M. Finnemore, Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics (Cornell University Press, 2004), p. 69.