Are women inherently better leaders than men? It could well be. I love that theory best, but who knows. Certainly women that have managed to rise to power within the existing patriarchal structures have had to be far more capable and hardworking than their male counterparts (most of whom seem to have gotten that job by accident these days), so it makes sense that women are more prepared to lead in time of uncertainty and better able to make difficult decisions, which the Covid-19 pandemic has required in mass quantities.
A study including 194 countries showed that “Covid-outcomes are systematically better in countries led by women.” And by ‘systematically better’ they mean, on average, half as many deaths as those led by men, as well as significantly fewer cases. The study points to differences in policy as the primary drivers of success, namely early and decisive lockdowns.
But exactly why these decisions were taken by women and not by men is difficult to prove empirically. The researchers in the study offer only a minimal discussion of possible explanations, drawing on behavioral science that suggests that women are more risk-averse than men and that they’re more willing to accept economic losses than loss of life.
If true — that women are less inclined to sacrifice human lives for the sake of the economy — in my opinion that alone qualifies them to run the damn world.
But at least some of the success attributed to the amazing female leaders like Ardern, Merkel, or Jakobsdóttir in dealing with Covid-19 could be explained by endogenous factors — meaning that societies in which it is even possible for women to be elected are already better positioned to deal with crises, because they are more egalitarian and their decision-making mechanisms at every level of governance are more inclusive and thus more robust.
Even more compelling, however, is the case made by the success of KK Shailaja in Kerala, India, which, for me, gets to the key takeaway of leadership: if you want to build a society that is resilient to crises, you need to invest in things that create value to your society — and you need to do it before crisis strikes. This requires vision and a different set of priorities. And that is something that has been empirically shown in studies: female leaders have different budget priorities than men. Women invest significantly more into education and healthcare than men.
As the article on Kerala points out, the Indian state is Communist. I’m not going to get into a discussion about that here — I spent years distancing myself from Communist ideology, because there were always at least a couple of Chads sitting next to me in my Economics courses telling me that if I hate capitalism so much, I should just go back to Russia. But I will say this: I think the case study of Kerala is insightful particularly because it points out that previous policies like land reform played a role in this success story. A legacy of inclusive institutions laid the path for the collective action required to respond to a public health crisis.
I’m not dwelling on this just to bash men, or capitalism. It’s just that if we misattribute the successes in Covid-19 response, we won’t understand the key takeaways and won’t be adequately prepared for the next disaster. Let’s look carefully at what good outcomes actually look like, and what policies and institutions got us there.
