WASHINGTON — During her interview for the top job at the International Monetary Fund last week, Christine Lagarde noticed a striking pattern.
All the questions came from men.
“There was not one single woman,” the French finance minister said Tuesday on French television.
Now there is.
On Tuesday, the IMF’s 24-member board decided she should become the first woman to lead the global lending organization, which is recovering from a sex scandal involving the man she’ll replace.
When she begins a five-year term next week, La garde will take charge of a melting pot of international elites — one that was known for male-dominated clubbiness well before the scandal involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn, her predecessor.
In her remarks to French television, she spoke to the cultural shift her selection represents. “While I was being questioned for three hours by 24 men, I thought, ‘It’s good that things are changing a little,’ ” she said.
Not everything will change. Lagarde will become the 11th European to lead the IMF, extending a streak that began with the organization’s creation in 1945. Among the challenges that await her, she must prod fellow Europeans to take painful steps to prevent a default by Greece.
A look at Lagarde
Should Christine Lagarde, 55, succeed in changing the IMF’s culture, it may have less to do with her gender and more with her experience in corporate America. Before she entered politics, Lagarde led Chicago-based international law firm Baker & McKenzie. U.S. management tends to be less tolerant of sexual scandals.
