finally, at previous hearings members of the committee asked about the number of women at senior levels of the reserve bank. i am pleased to be able to report that we have made further progress here. of the three assistant governors responsible for monetary and financial policies at the reserve bank, two are women. and women run over a third of the departments in the bank, including those responsible for the bank ’ s economic analysis function and for the implementation of monetary policy. so it ’ s quite a big change from days gone by when almost all of these important positions were held by men. i want to highlight these changes in the hope that they might provide some inspiration to women who are thinking of studying economics, finance and business. there are fantastic career opportunities out there and it would be great to see more women studying these disciplines, and perhaps considering a career at australia ’ s central bank. we are currently working on some initiatives to encourage this, at both the school and university level. thank you. my colleagues and i are here to answer your questions. 4 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches

too. but our infrastructure and our big towns are much younger than their belgian counterparts. let me now turn to the survey of the finnish economy. [ slide 2 ] finland is a small open economy, where trade has shaped the key trends of our economy. even if the exports have been falling recently, they still represent about 40 % of gdp. finland ’ s trade with euro area economies has been increasing since the global financial crisis, germany being currently the largest trading partner. russia ’ s share of our exports has fallen to 6 %, notably because of weak growth performance in russia since 2013, after the drop in oil prices. 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches finland ’ s goods exports consist mainly of paper and wood products, metal and engineering products, and electronics equipment. in recent years, the structure of the finnish economy has undergone radical changes in the wake of difficulties encountered by the forest and electronics industries. export earnings from the mobile phone business, which had long supported our economy, have disappeared, the significance of russia has diminished, while importance of countries such as germany have increased. despite the difficulties of the recent past, the forest industry is still one of the pillars of finnish exports alongside the heavy engineering metal industry, and high tech electronics. software industry, like online games, creates a lot of revenue, but employ relatively few people. [ slide 3 ] finland ’ s growth performance was exceptional between 1995 and 2007. it was fueled by finland ’ s long tradition of investing heavily on human capital and education. the focus on engineering helped too. finland was in the good position to ride on the global trend of ict and mobile phones after the exceptionally deep recession in the early 1990s. finnish export firms managed to create products enjoying widespread demand and capable of capturing new geographical market areas. by the turn of the millennium, the electrical engineering and electronics industry had outstripped the forest industry as the largest export sector, its products accounting for about a third of total export value. eu accession also helped to set up the credible fiscal framework and push through important structural reforms at the time. [ slide 4 ] unfortunately, the tide changed rapidly around the global financial crises. finland suffered from the decline in foreign markets during the global financial crises. initially, the recovery was fast, but it lasted only until about 2011. after that finland entered a period of low growth ( or even no growth ) and increasing unemployment. this period of low growth was due to a unique mix of asymmetric shocks. they all contributed to falling