Female leaders are seen to have handled the crisis remarkably well. But does this anecdotal perception stand up to more systematic scrutiny?
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 female leaders were seen to have handled the crisis remarkably well.
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. We 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.
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.
We considered whether these results might imply that women leaders are more risk averse. Literature on attitudes to risk and uncertainty suggests that women – even those in leadership roles – appear to be more averse to risk than men.
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