By Christiane Amanpour

I’ve often talked to Christine Lagarde about the role of women in this very male-dominated world. Not just at the pinnacle of political power, but also at the top of the banking and business world.

During the financial crisis, for instance, Lagarde told me she thought that if there had been more women in positions of political and economic power, perhaps the financial crisis, bank collapses and very risky investments wouldn’t have been as dramatic.

She was not arguing for a brave new world of female domination! Just a bit more parity where it matters!

Lagarde was the first female chairman of Chicago law firm Baker & McKenzie. She was France’s first female finance minister (indeed the first female finance minister of any G7 country). And she is now the first female managing director of the International Monetary Fund, dispensing billions of dollars in loans around the world.

Lagarde says in all her decades of experience she has noticed a different negotiating tactic between men and women. Men tend to look at it as a zero-sum game, she says: ‘you have to lose in order for me to win.’ She said men bring a lot of ego and testosterone to the table. That is why she argues for more parity in the boardroom.

During the current global economic crisis, especially in the eurozone, we can’t ignore the lighting rod that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has become. I’ve seen her depicted as Nazi, and read the most horrible things written about her looks.

So in my latest interview with Christine Lagarde, I asked did she think that Merkel would be under this kind of personal attack and pressure if she weren’t a woman?