The Federal Reserve System is much larger and more complicated than it should be.
The system of a Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., and 12 (regional) Banks was devised as a compromise between having a central bank versus a decentralized banking system; and, also to deal with “housekeeping operations” such as clearing checks.
The fact is, the system has evolved into a central bank, and the housekeeping operations should be spun off to the private sector. There actually is no need for the (regional) banks.
Now, as to the malarky that the Fed is dominated by white males: Women have made less inroad into banking and finance than into corporate management in general. Management involves a broad range of skills, including many in which the average woman has an advantage relative to the average man (e.g., interpersonal relations). Banking and finance emphasizes the skills (abstract reasoning) in which the average man has an advantage relative to the average woman.
It is, of course, politically incorrect to recognize that we - and practically all other advanced animals - are dimorphic (specialized by sex). The other party is into denying such basic realities. Hence, the other party will eventually come to see sex differences in everything as due to prejudice, and deny the obvious fact of dimorphism.
As to race (or, ethnicity), banking and finance has no necessary connection to race. Other things equal, people of the several races should percolate up to all levels in the industry. But, it should not be surprising that individuals who overwhelmingly vote Democratic are going to have a hard time succeeding in the world of private enterprise and especially those parts of private enterprise that rely on contract and the rule of law.
>> There actually is no need for the (regional) banks <<
I disagree. I think the votes on the FOMC that are allocated to the regional presidents are a factor that keeps the Fed from becoming 100% dominated by an inside-the-Beltway DC mentality.
Now to be sure, the regional structure is an awkward mechanism, and I have no doubt that it can be streamlined and improved. But on the other hand, I submit that the overall goal of insulating monetary policy from 100% centralized political control justifies keeping the “baby” in spite of some inevitably dirty bathwater.