The science is clear: women-led countries are doing better in the pandemic

As all of us, wherever we live in the world, wrestle with the bleak and corrosive anxieties of a global pandemic, early academic research is offering at least one clear and consistent insight: you are safer if you live in a country governed by a woman.

Most recent, and most comprehensive, is a Liverpool University study led by Professor Supriya Garikipati, with colleague Uma Kambhampati at the University of Reading, which shows that countries led by women were locked down earlier, “followed the science” more rigorously, and as a result, have so far seen half as many Covid-19 deaths.

“Being female-led has provided countries with an advantage in the current crisis,” Garikipati concluded: “Our results clearly indicate that women leaders reacted more quickly and decisively in the face of potential fatalities. In almost all cases, they locked down earlier than male leaders in similar circumstances […] it has certainly helped these countries to save lives.”

The study combed data for 194 countries up to May 19, with just 19 of them led by women. The study excluded Taiwan and Hong Kong – both led by women – because the World Bank (the study’s main source of consistently comparable macro data) covers neither.

Had they been included – given that Hong Kong and Taiwan have been among the world’s most successful on containing the virus – Garikipati’s study would have reached even stronger conclusions about the superior performance of women leaders during Covid-19.

The University of Liverpool study confirms the findings of studies from teams at Trinity College Dublin, and from the Westminster Foundation for Democracy at King’s College London (in conjunction with the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership), both undertaken in May.

The Trinity College study, of just 35 countries, found that women-led economies suffered six times fewer confirmed deaths, with more rapid “flattening of the curve” and caseload peaks six times lower than those in male-led countries.

It drew particular attention to Scandinavia, where female-led Denmark, Norway and Finland moved so much more effectively than male-led Sweden: “Most women-led governments have also placed a stronger emphasis on social and environmental well-being, investing more in public health and reducing air pollution,” the authors said.

The Liverpool team confirmed this conclusion: “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,” Garikipati wrote.

From Montreal, a study using data from an annual World Economic Forum gender parity survey, by women’s champion Louise Champoux-Paille with colleague Anne-Marie Croteau, credited the superior performance of women during the pandemic on “common features”: resilience, pragmatism, benevolence, trust in collective common sense, mutual aid and humility: “Gender-balanced environments produce more robust decisions,” they noted in an article in May in The Conversation.

I balk only at the implication that these “common features” are not shared by many male leaders, but let us leave that challenge for another day.

The Liverpool study challenges a widespread conventional wisdom that women leaders are more risk averse: “While women leaders were risk averse with regard to lives, they were prepared to take significant risks with their economies by locking down early,” Garikipati said. “Risk aversion may manifest differently in different domains, with women leaders being significantly more risk averse in the domain of human life, but more risk taking in the domain of the economy.”

Drawing on the pandemic as “a unique global experiment in national crisis management”, these studies seem to agree that male leaders have in general served their countries less well during the pandemic. And with examples such as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson, the view seems hard to challenge.

Remember the testosterone-heavy Bolsonaro dismissing Covid-19 as “a little flu” or a “little cold”? Or Johnson so keen to demonstrate cavalier machismo that he “shook hands with everybody” at a hospital with coronavirus patients?

In contrast, the steadiest and most trustworthy leaders in recent months have clearly been Angela Merkel of Germany and Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand – and their steadiness has been rewarded with thousands of saved lives.

Garikipati is nevertheless anxious to emphasise that this is still an early stage in the development of the global pandemic, and that their study was based on immediate reactions to the first wave. Obviously, their study needs to be repeated when the final toll of the pandemic is measured – both in terms of lives and economic cost – perhaps more than a year from now.

But even at this early stage, certain conclusions seem clear: there are systemic and statistically measurable differences in the efficacy of policymaking when countries are led by women, that “gender-balanced” policymaking produces more robust decisions, that qualities normally viewed as “female” – such as empathy, compassion, listening and collaboration – are hugely valuable not just in a pandemic or other health crises, but also on issues that demand close international cooperation, such as the climate crisis, environmental pollution, resource use, ageing, and skills shortages.

Why are women leading the coronavirus fight, but still losing out?

Differences in approaches to risk also seem important. As Garikipati noted: “While both men and women are often overconfident, men are more overconfident of success in uncertain situations.” Perhaps even more important, she suggests that when faced with negative experiences or setbacks, “men tend to react with anger, while women react with caution”.

With women leading just 19 of the 194 countries studied by Garikipati, it will clearly be some time before we get enough women leaders – and women in positions of power in more general terms – to build an exact science around the difference female leadership makes.

Here in Hong Kong, we have a work in progress: while Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has, on balance, managed the pandemic challenge with reasonable skill, she has inspired little confidence in almost any other area of leadership. She in no way stands near Merkel or Ardern as a source of confidence. She is perhaps more comparable with Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi. But that must surely be a story for another day.

David Dodwell researches and writes about global, regional and Hong Kong challenges from a Hong Kong point of view