Today, as we celebrate International Womens Day , we celebrate the enormous progress made by women throughout history. Yet, it is also a time where we reflect on the enormous discriminatory divide that disadvantaged women throughout that very history.

Thankfully, we have very few areas where we find no women leaders: whether it is corporate chief executives to country presidents to non-governmental organization heads.

Global multilateral development banks (MDBs) are perhaps the last bastion of male dominance perhaps with the exception of the UN Secretary Generalship and the American Presidency.*

It is surprising that in their more than seventy year history, there is not a single woman president of any MDB.

Surveying the major nine MDBs ranging from the World Bank to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to the African Development Bank we find that 46 men have led those institutions, while no woman has been provided access. It was only recently, in their last elections where women contested even then, only one or two women were in the candidate roster, which was again dominated by men.

This discriminatory trend prevails across regions and even in new institutions, like the BRICS led New Development Bank (NDB) or Chinas Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) so one cannot blame the older, traditional, West dominated MDBs like the World Bank alone. Discrimination against women crosses cultures and regions (and religions as the case of IsDB shows) when it comes to MDBs.