challenges. among them are greater gender equity in the middle office by strengthening training and mentoring programs, increasing the participation of women in the total staff, which currently stands around one - third, incorporating a gender equity and diversity training module for all staff, along with maintaining gender equity training for our leaders, and increasing the attraction of women in information technology and women phd economists in research areas. carrying out these actions has not been an easy road to travel, cultural changes are not easy. however, as institutions with public functions, we must be at the forefront and push this change, always adding everyone within the organization. inclusion means adding up. in our banks we all need each other. we have to open the doors to opportunities for everyone. conclusion even when we are working to reach diversity in our institutions, there are still substantial challenges ahead. there have been achievements in comparison with just a few years ago, of course, but is very clear that we must pick up the pace, and manage the change, culture and diversity although the difficulties in our own environments. as you have seen, i centered my presentation in gender gaps. not only for my own experience or the work we are doing in the central bank of chile in this field, but the economic value generated for closing this gap, since as a society we are wasting talent, with direct effects on the well - being of a significant part of the population. working on these and other challenges, such as unconscious cultural biases, not only contributes to a fairer society, but also a more prosperous one. in this regard, i would like to highlight the role of each central bank in addressing these challenges. in addition to the efforts of each institution in promoting gender equity internally, we also have a paramount role in society beyond setting an example. how can we move forward on what each central bank can do on this issue? speaking from my own experience, i would like to mention some relevant points. one of them is to raise awareness and to make concrete and increasing efforts to eliminate " microsexism " or unconscious bias in our institutions. besides, in conferences and panels on research and economic policy, we can foster the participation of both women and men. this is not trivial. in economics, women represent a smaller proportion of economists, particularly in macroeconomics, and finance, and in chile they are at least a third of the total. this is partly due to self - selection outside this discipline. having all the excellent women who make up the profession

months. recent public discussions have centered on parity movements. the real exchange rate is, without any doubt, a key variable in resource allocation and in the balance between saving and investment. unlike conjunctures of past decades, in particular those of the mid - 1980s, the chilean economy has dealt with the complex global financial situation from a much sounder standpoint. the sudden global collapse of late last year found us with no big currentaccount or fiscal deficit, nor with a high external debt requiring strong fiscal adjustments with substantial real depreciation that would place the economy in a sustainable medium - term path. on the contrary, the significant contraction of domestic demand, in particular for imported durable goods and inventories, spontaneously and quickly undid the incipient external deficit of the second half of 2008 and interest rates in chile dropped. the chilean economy has continued to show a very solvent net external position. figure 2 cpi and selected inflation measures ( annual change, percent ) - 2 cpi - 2 mar - 03 mar - 04 mar - 05 mar - 06 mar - 07 mar - 08 mar - 09 cpix cpix1 cpi minus foods and energy sources : national statistics bureau ( ine ) and central bank of chile. as we have pointed out on earlier occasions, persistent movements of the exchange rate may have inflationary consequences that must be taken into account when deciding on the monetary impulse. anyway, our floating regime admits intervening in exceptional cases, whenever an overreaction of the exchange rate is detected that is giving misleading signals to the financial markets. in addition, although there is no obvious misalignment of the current real exchange rate from its long - term fundamentals, the present inflationary scenario may accommodate a nominal depreciation that does not compromise our price stability objective. in fact, imported inflationary pressures influence medium - term inflation, so if the recent appreciation of the peso persists, inflationary prospects will certainly moderate, which, as i just stated, has implications on the conduct of monetary policy. from the public finance standpoint, it is hardly obvious that the aforesaid situation could have been avoided with a different mix of credit sources for the necessary fiscal impulse. this, because the level and the structure of interest rates are also important when trying to affect gaps and inflation in the medium term. summing up, the changes we have seen in the macroeconomic scenario since last may lead us to think that, if anything, inflationary pressures are less than were