Female leaders have NOT fared significantly better in the pandemic
And that’s good news for feminism!
It was a very comforting narrative, wasn’t it?
It was TOO comforting.
When the pandemic hit last year the political response soon became tangled up in a big story about gender and leadership. Countries led by women were doing better, we heard. Oh, to live in New Zealand and be under the competent and loving care of Jacinda Ardern!
What rotten luck to live in places run by people called Donald or Boris!
Female leaders were just doing better. Locking down faster. Not accidentally making people drink bleach, or thinking it was a good idea that they should inject themselves with Covid-19 live on TV….
Female leaders were in control.
Female leaders were awesome.
Germany under Angela Merkel had a lower Covid-19 death rate than Boris Johnson’s Britain. Finland, with its female prime minister Sanna Marin was outperforming Sweden. Taiwan’s female leader, Tsai Ing-wen, kept its coronavirus deaths to just seven.
We loved to read about this. There were even studies confirming the anecdotal evidence and about a million think-pieces were launched about what all of this MEANT.
Now it turns out it didn’t mean that much. Because it probably wasn’t quite that simple.
“The view that women have been better leaders is . . . based on selective reporting of cases where women have succeeded, and are focused on [relatively rich] countries.”
Yes, states with female leaders did better in terms of death rates, but the difference was not significant.
I’d say this is good news for feminism if true.
The popular argument that female leaders did better during the pandemic always rested on a number of assumptions about women and risk. There’s an old stereotype that women are simply more risk averse than men. If you are a woman and you wouldn’t inject yourself with Covid on live TV? Congratulations! You are a sensible person.
BUT this doesn’t mean that women are more risk averse in general.
Economist Julie Nelson notes in her book, Gender and Risk-Taking: Economics, Evidence, and Why the Answer Matters that 95 percent of the risk preferences of men and women actually overlap.
95 percent!
Julie Nelson compares it to height. When it comes to height, 95 percent of the time the next man you pass in the street is likely to be taller than the next woman. So betting on that the next woman you meet will be shorter than the next man is NOT a stupid thing to do.
By contrast, when it comes to risk the next woman you pass in the street is only 5 per cent more likely to be more cautious than the next man. So if you are making decisions based on assumptions like “we need someone cautious to not c**k this up, let’s go with a woman!”. You are VERY likely to be wrong.
SHE MIGHT INJECT HERSELF WITH COVID ON LIVE TV!
(Or crash your investment bank).
There was also something else about the whole narrative on female leaders that I found problematic. We were basically pointing to a number of (almost exclusively) white women and saying that because these women were morally superior as leaders all women deserved more rights and opportunities.
And this type of thinking is OLD. It was definitely around during the fight for women’s suffrage. The (white) woman as an angel possessing particular virtues (compassion! nonviolence! patience!) And it was because (white) women possessed these traits that we should let all women into public life - not because they had a right to be there in the first place.
(I recommend Koa Beck’s book White Feminism for more on these matters).
Also, why are female leaders only called upon when there’s a BIG FREAKING MESS to sort out?
It was the same in 2008. It was only AFTER the global financial system MELTED DOWN that female leaders were wanted. Because again, they were thought to be more risk averse. Not because women should have had a fair chance to get into these positions of power before things went so badly wrong.
It’s like we only want female leaders when there’s some serious tidying up to do after some man has messed up.
I might be old fashioned, but what about the old principle of you- broke- it- you- fix- it? Just a suggestion…
It has been a long week.
Happy Thursday!
Katrine
That's fascinating. I was thinking about this one the other day, and was wondering if there's something in societies that are smart enough to elect women leaders that also means they behave better in a crisis. I'm sure there's some tipping point here but I'm not quite sure where it is.