Mark Carney's First Female MPC Member: Vicky Pryce, Stephanie Flanders or Gillian Tett?

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said it was "striking" and "anomalous" that there were no female members of the Monetary Policy Committee, so it is surely only a matter of time before Chancellor George Osborne picks up the hint and hires another woman for one of the nine seats.

There have only been four women who have ever sat on the MPC since it was created in 1997, when the then New Labour government cut it away by giving it its independence.

Bookmaker Paddy Power has already had the calculators out and come up with some odds for likely - and not so likely - women with a chance of becoming the next female member of the MPC. Here they are:

Sheila Dow - 3/1

The favourite, Dow is a distinguished University of Stirling professor who has already worked as an economist at the Bank of England and is a monetary policy adviser to parliament's Treasury Select Committee.

Janet Henry - 4/1

Long-time HSBC staffer Henry is currently the big bank's chief European economist. She was touted before as a potential replacement for Andrew Sentence, who quit the MPC in May 2011.

Melanie Baker - 5/1

Morgan Stanley's chief UK economist, Baker worked for David Miles who was in the role before her and went on to site on the MPC from 2009 to 2012. Perhaps her old boss can put in a good word.

Bridget Rosewell OBE - 12/1

Rosewell was a senior economic adviser to the Greater London Authority for a decade, as well as a deputy director for economics at the Confederation of British Industry (which has a history of passing staff to the Bank of England).

Lucrezia Reichlin - 14/1

Reichlin, who holds a PhD in economics from New York University, has central bank experience. She was director of general research at the European Central Bank and is now a professor at the London Business School.

Gillian Tett - 20/1

The award-winning journalist and author is a columnist and assistant editor at the Financial Times, and holds a PhD in social anthropology from Cambridge University. She claims to have seen the financial crisis coming and her book on how it all came about, Fool's Gold, has won plaudits across the world.

Stephanie Flanders - 25/1

Flanders is economics editor of BBC News and has the job of explaining things like quantitative easing to the British population as they eat dinner in front of the flagship bulletins.

Before entering journalism, Flanders worked for the Institute for Fiscal Studies and as an adviser to US Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers. She also once dated Ed Miliband, but don't hold that against her.

Vicky Pryce - 66/1

A distant outsider, Pryce would have been a favourite at one point were it not for the 'speeding points' political scandal involving her husband, the former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne.

Her economist credentials are unquestionable, but her reputation has been shattered. She was once head of the Government Economic Service and was rewarded with a CB by the Queen - promptly stripped away after she was imprisoned for perverting the course of justice.