Published 3. August – edited by Peter Horn
Resumé: “Our findings show that COVID-19 outcomes are systematically and significantly better in countries led by women and, to some extent, this may be explained by the proactive policy responses they adopted,” write Supriya Garikipati, Associate Professor in Development Economics, University of Liverpool Uma Kambhampati, Professor of Economics, University of Reading, in a new study, published by World Economic Forum and VoxEU. “Even accounting for institutional context and other controls, being female-led has provided countries with an advantage in the current crisis. Examining what is already known about the gender differences in behaviour from a variety of disciplines gives us some insights into observed differential behaviour of female and male leaders in tackling the current pandemic.”
- COVID-19 cases could be related to the gender of a country’s leader.
- The findings show that COVID outcomes are systematically better in countries led by women.
- Female leaders were found to be locking their countries down far sooner than their male counterparts.
On 8 June 2020, New Zealand was declared virus-free and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern lifted all restrictions except stringent border controls. With fewer than 500 confirmed cases and seven deaths from the virus Taiwan, under the presidency of Tsai Ing-wen, is seen to have performed very well.
Germany, under Angela Merkel, has done better than most European countries in the first quarter of the COVID pandemic. The performance of these female leaders in the COVID pandemic offers a unique global experiment in national crisis management and has given rise to much media attention. This is a significant shift from the male-dominated view of history within which events are typically considered as determined by the instrumental and causal influence of a small number of ‘Great Men’ (e.g. Keegan 2003). But does this association stand up to systematic scrutiny?
Differences in policy measures adopted by male and female leaders
In a new paper (Garikipati and Kambhampati 2020), the authors consider whether there are significant differences in the COVID-outcomes of male and female led-countries in the first quarter of the pandemic. “We also consider whether these differences can be explained by differences in policy measures adopted by male and female leaders. In particular, we consider the timing of lockdown in these countries”.
“Anything said about the pandemic now has to be qualified by the fact that we are only at the start of the pandemic. Much could change in the next few months. Our analysis therefore relates to the immediate reaction of leaders to the first wave of the crisis. Another qualification to keep in mind is the quality of data currently available. In particular, with the shortage of test kits, testing has been poor (Baunez et al. 2020) and therefore case numbers are an underestimate. While data on deaths are more reliable, there are concerns about its comparability across countries. In some countries, if a COVID-positive individual dies, the death is registered as a COVID death irrespective of any other previous illness (such as tuberculosis or cancer). But this is not standard or mandatory, so practice varies across countries.”
” Female-led countries have fared better in terms of absolute number with male-led countries having nearly double the number of deaths ”
“We begin by looking at some summary statistics. Table 1 presents COVID-19 cases and deaths by gender of the country’s leaders. It confirms that female-led countries have fared better in terms of absolute number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, with male-led countries having nearly double the number of deaths as female-led ones. However, drawing anything conclusive from these raw comparisons is difficult due to the massive underrepresentation of female-led countries in the sample. We have only 19 countries across the world being led by women, compared with the 174 in our sample that are male-led.”
Table 1 COVID-19 cases and deaths in countries by gender of national leader
To overcome the difficulty of imbalanced sample sizes, we ‘match’ each of the female-led countries with their nearest neighbour. We use several socio-demographic and economic characteristics that have been seen as important in the transmission of COVID-19 as matching variables. We begin by considering key demographic and national wealth indicators (including GDP, population over 65 years, and population in urban agglomerations) as these have emerged as the most relevant (Sá 2020). Figure 1 below illustrates some examples of comparing COVID-19 cases and deaths in female-led countries with their near neighbour matched by size of population. When matched like this, it is clear that female-led countries have fewer cases and fewer deaths and have locked down earlier than male countries with respect to cases and deaths (…).
Nearest neighbour analysis clearly confirms that when women-led countries are compared to countries similar to them along a range of characteristics, they have performed better, experiencing fewer cases as well as fewer deaths. This is true whether we consider the nearest neighbour, the nearest two, three or even five neighbours. The results are especially highly significant in the case of the number of deaths experienced by female-led countries (…).
What is also clear from our analysis is that timing of lockdown has been driving the better outcomes in female-led countries. (…) Why have women leaders decided to lock down their countries earlier than male leaders?
Figure 1 COVID-19 cases and deaths: Comparing female-led and male-led countries with similar populations
Women more risk aversion if lives are at stake
One explanation for gender-differences in the propensity to lock down early might be found in the literature on attitudes to risk and uncertainty, which suggests that women, even those in leadership roles, appear to be more risk-averse than men (e.g. Croson and Gneezy 2009, Charness and Gneezy 2012). Indeed, in the current crisis, several incidents of risky behaviour by male leaders have been reported. Particularly noteworthy among these are Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro’s dismissal of COVID-19 as “a little flu or a bit of a cold” (Ajzenman et al. 2020) while attending an anti-lockdown protest in April. Similarly, Britain’s Boris Johnson is reported to have said, “I was at a hospital where there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody” (as reported in Lewis 2020).
” Britain’s Boris Johnson said, “I was at a hospital where there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody”
However, while women leaders were risk averse with regard to lives, they were prepared to take significant risks with their economies by locking down early. Thus, risk aversion may manifest differently in different domains – human life versus economic outcomes – with women leaders being significantly more risk averse in the domain of human life, but more risk taking in the domain of the economy (…).
Men are ‘task-oriented’ – women ‘interpersonally’
Another explanation of gender differences in response to the pandemic is to be found in the leadership literature, where strong evidence can be found to suggest that men and women differ in their leadership styles. Eagly and Johnson (1990), through a meta-analysis of research that compares male and female leadership styles, find that leadership styles were gender stereotypic, with men likely to lead in a ‘task-oriented’ style and women in an ‘interpersonally oriented’ manner. Consistent with this finding, women tended to adopt a more democratic and participative style. Evidence also suggests that good communications skills are important for women to be chosen as leaders and that this is one of the key attributes in managing a crisis (Lemoine et al. 2016).
”Good communications skills are important for women to be chosen as leaders and a key attribute in managing a crisis ”
“Indeed, the decisive and clear communication styles adopted by several female leaders have received much praise in the ongoing crisis (e.g. Henley and Roy 2020, McLean 2020, Taub 2020). Thus, in Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg spoke direct to children answering their questions, while in New Zealand Prime Minster Ardern was praised for the way in which she communicated and for checking in with her citizens through Facebook Live.”
Read the full research here
More information and research:
- The reason why female leaders are excelling at managing the coronavirus
- This is the effect female politicians have – and why we need more of them
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