Is Women Leader better than Male Counterpart?
Over the last few months, there has been much discussion of leadership during the pandemic. What constitutes good leadership? Who has performed better and which countries have been worse? One pattern that emerged early on was that women leaders were seen to have handled the crisis remarkably well.
Countries led by women had “systematically and significantly better” Covid-19 outcomes, research appears to show, locking down earlier and suffering half as many deaths on average as those led by men.
The relative early success of leaders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and Finland’s Sanna Marin has so far attracted many headlines but little academic attention.
The analysis of 194 countries, published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the World Economic Forum, suggests the difference is real and “may be explained by the proactive and coordinated policy responses” adopted by female leaders.
Even after clear and frequently cited outliers such as New Zealand and Germany – and the US for male leaders – were removed from the statistics, the study found, the case for the relative success of female leaders was only strengthened.
“Our results clearly indicate that women leaders reacted more quickly and decisively in the face of potential fatalities,” said Supriya Garikipati, a developmental economist at Liverpool University, co-author with Reading University’s Uma Kambhampati.
“In almost all cases, they locked down earlier than male leaders in similar circumstances. While this may have longer-term economic implications, it has certainly helped these countries to save lives, as evidenced by the significantly lower number of deaths in these countries.”
The two researchers said they analysed differing policy responses and subsequent total Covid-19 cases and deaths until 19 May, introducing a number of variables to help analyse the raw data and draw reliable comparisons between countries.
Among the datasets considered were GDP, total population, population density and proportion of elderly residents, as well as annual health spending per head, openness to international travel and level of gender equality in society in general.
Since only 19 of the nearly 200 countries were led by women, the authors also created so-called “nearest neighbour” countries to offset the small sample size, pairing Germany, New Zealand and Bangladesh with male-led Britain, Ireland and Pakistan.
“This 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,” Garikipati said.
She added that while female leaders “were risk averse with regard to lives”, locking their countries down significantly earlier than male leaders, that also suggested they were “more willing to take risks in the domain of the economy”.
When compared according to the “openness to travel” criterion, female-led countries did not experience significantly lower Covid cases but did report lower deaths, the researchers found, concluding that this may suggest “better policies and compliance”.
Garikipati said the evidence of a “significant and systematic difference” showed that even accounting for institutional context and other controls, “being female-led has provided countries with an advantage in the current crisis”.
The researchers said they hoped the study would “serve as a starting point to illuminate the discussion on the influence of national leaders in explaining the differences in country Covid-outcomes”.
On June 9, a beaming New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the country had eliminated the disease, earning global praise for her steadfast response to the pandemic. However, more than 100 days later, a new wave of coronavirus infections have hit the country, with the government wasting no time in re-imposing a lockdown in Auckland and postponing general elections by four weeks.
As early as March 15, when the country had only 100 confirmed cases, the government closed its borders to foreign travellers and quarantined people coming home for 14 days. A week later, it imposed a stringent lockdown, with only grocery stores, pharmacies, hospitals and gas stations allowed to stay open.
Besides, the government was quick on its feet and communicated the rules to the public effectively, sending emergency text messages to residents before the lockdown. Moreover, the country ramped up its testing capacity to 8,000 tests per day, one of the highest testing rates per capita in the world at that time.
Compared to neighbours like France and Italy, Germany’s Covid-19 response has been widely regarded as relatively successful owing to widespread testing, a well-equipped healthcare system and good adherence to social distancing.
A scientist herself, Merkel provided weekly data-driven updates to the public as a way to instill confidence in lockdowns and also deployed a handful of prominent scientists to communicate with the citizens to weed out rumours and misinformation.
As early as March, hospitals in Germany started freeing up intensive care beds and pushed back elective surgeries. Thus hospitals in Germany were not overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients and people from neighbouring countries like Italy and Spain were also being treated. The government also put in place a live-dashboard of all available ICU beds in hospitals countrywide.
Denmark, which went into a lockdown on March 12 — 12 days before measures were introduced in the UK, was one of the first European countries to partially re-open its society way back in May. Gatherings were limited to 10 people, the workforce told to stay home and schools, restaurants and borders were shut. A ban on festivals and large events has been placed until September.
Researcher Janne Rothmar Herrmann also pointed out that Denmark made major changes in the Epidemic Act, transferring power from the regional Epidemic Commissions to the Health Minister. The Minister was authorised to access a person’s home with police assistance without prior court order. “He was also entitled to use police assistance to isolate, examine or treat a person who is infected or believed to be infected,” Herrmann said.
Despite being one of the densely-populated countries, Bangladesh has a low coronavirus death rate so far. Bangladesh has a death rate of 1.3 per cent, one of the world’s lowest, against the global average of 3.54 per cent.
The foremost step that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took was to diffuse the panic among its citizens — she conducted national broadcasts with frontline workers almost every day and avoided using the word lockdown in any of its references.
By late January, the government evacuated Bangladeshi citizens from China and put them in quarantine. Unlike other nations, Bangladesh went for a tiered system of lockdown as cases started being reported. First, the educational institutions were shut down, then non-essential businesses and services were closed, while others were asked to expand their online services.
The government also roped in civil society members along with police and military for enforcing the lockdown. A ‘6 pm to 6 am’ restriction was imposed, especially in dense urban areas.
In a study done by scroll.in, they decided to investigate whether this anecdotal perception stands up to more systematic scrutiny. To do this, they analysed how leaders around the world reacted to the early days of the pandemic to see whether differences in performance can be explained by differences in policy measures adopted by male and female leaders.
Two qualifications need to be kept in mind – first, we are only at the start of the pandemic and much could change in the next few months. Second, the quality of data currently available is limited. Inadequate testing means that case numbers are probably an underestimate. The way deaths are registered also varies across countries.
There are far fewer female-led countries in the world when compared to male-led. Just 10% in our sample of 194 countries have women as national leaders. Given the small number of female-led countries, the most appropriate way to consider their performance is to match them with “similar” male-led countries. They did this by matching countries with similar profiles for the socio-demographic and economic characteristics that have been seen as important in the transmission of Covid-19.
In the first instance, they compared countries with similar GDP per capita, population, population density and population over 65 years. We then extended our matching variables to include three other characteristics – annual health expenditure per capita, the number of tourists entering the country and gender equality.
These comparisons threw up clear differences between female-led and similar male-led countries during the first quarter of the pandemic (up to mid-May).
Hong Kong, which is led by a woman, recorded 1,056 cases and four deaths while Singapore, which has a similar economy and comparable demographic characteristics but is led by a man, recorded 28,794 cases and 22 deaths in the same period. Similarly, Norway, led by a woman, had 8,257 cases and 233 deaths, while Ireland, led by a man, recorded 24,200 cases and 1,547 deaths. Taiwan recorded 440 cases and seven deaths while South Korea had 11,078 cases and 263 deaths.
Countries led by women have performed better, especially in terms of deaths and this is true whether we consider the nearest comparable nation, the nearest two, three or even five. Belgium is an outlier, having appeared to perform badly on cases and deaths while led by a woman. But despite its inclusion, the overall results regarding female-led countries stand.
For example, Finland was better than Sweden, Austria and France in terms of both cases and deaths. Germany was better than France and the United Kingdom. Bangladesh fared better than the Phillippines and Pakistan in terms of deaths.
Analysing what might cause this differential performance, they find that the female-led countries locked down significantly earlier than the male-led countries. Female-led countries like New Zealand and Germany locked down much more quickly and decisively than male-led ones like the UK. On average, they had 22 deaths fewer at lockdown when compared to their male counterparts.
They considered whether these results might imply that women leaders are more risk-averse. Literature on attitudes to risk and uncertainty suggests that female – even those in leadership roles – appear to be more averse to risk than men.
Indeed, in the current crisis, several incidents of risky behaviour by male leaders have been reported. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro dismissed Covid-19 as “a little flu or a bit of a cold” and UK prime minister Boris Johnson said he “shook hands with everybody” on a hospital visit. Both men subsequently contracted the virus.
However, this is a simplistic explanation. While women leaders were risk-averse with regard to lives, they have clearly been prepared to take significant and early risks with their economies by locking down early. So women leaders seem to have been significantly more risk-averse in the domain of human life, but more risk-taking in the domain of the economy.
They find some support for this idea in studies that examine risk-taking behaviour when lotteries are framed as losses. Men are found to be more risk-averse than women when lotteries are framed as financial losses rather than gains. It could well be that the relatively late lockdown decisions by male leaders may reflect male risk aversion to anticipated losses from locking down the economy.
Leadership style
Another explanation of gender differences in response to the pandemic is to be found in the leadership styles of men and women. Studies suggest that men are likely to lead in a “task-oriented” style and women in an “interpersonally-oriented” manner. Women, therefore, tend to adopt a more democratic and participative style and tend to have better communications skills.
This has been in evidence during this crisis in the decisive and clear communication styles adopted by several women leaders, whether it be Norway’s prime minister Erna Solberg speaking directly to children or Ardern checking in with her citizens through Facebook lives.
The study’s findings show that COVID-19-outcomes in the early stages of the pandemic were systematically and significantly better in countries led by women. This, to some extent, may be explained by the proactive policy responses they adopted. Even accounting for institutional context and other controls, being female-led has provided countries with an advantage in the current crisis.
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