One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become clear that different countries have varying success in fighting the virus and saving lives. Supriya Garikipati and Uma Kambhampati dedicate their new working paper to the question: What role does a country leader’s gender play in the fight against the pandemic? They conclude that female leaders were faster than their male counterparts to enter the first Covid-19 lockdown, which led to more lives being saved.
Female-led countries fared better, but…
When simply comparing numbers, it is clear that female-led countries have indeed done a lot better in the pandemic than male-led ones. Both the average number of COVID-19 cases and the average death toll related to the virus are much lower in countries led by women than in countries that have a male head of government.
This does, however, not mean that having a female leader is what determines how well a country copes with the pandemic. There are many factors that may influence this outcome, such as a country’s GDP and population size – or even how many tourists travel there. So how did the researchers isolate the effect of the leader’s gender on pandemic performance?
… was gender the determining factor?
To make countries more comparable, the researchers matched them based on characteristics they deemed influential on pandemic development, in particular GDP per capita, population, city density, and population older than 65 years old. This “nearest neighbour”-method allowed them to compare countries that were very similar except for the gender of their leaders. They also controlled for annual health expenditure, the number of tourists entering the country, and a country’s gender equality index. The logic behind this last control, according to the authors, was that countries who elected a female leader might generally be more equitable or modern, allowing the political leader to enact more cautious policies.
After controlling for these potential omitted variables that could be driving the effect of the pandemic on a country, they still found that female-led countries performed better. The researchers also checked if their results held if they dropped from the analysis the US, Germany, and New Zealand, and it did.
Why were female-led countries more successful in their response?
The authors found that female-led countries entered into the first lockdown significantly quicker than male-led ones. On average, countries led by women locked down at 22 Covid-related deaths fewer than countries led by men. The quicker initial response then prevented more deaths later on.
The authors point to findings from behavioural economics suggesting that women are more risk-averse than men and neurobiology showing that women on average incorporate more emotional information into their decision making. Men, on the other hand, tend to be more overconfident in uncertain situations and are more averse to accepting economic losses. Simply put, the selected findings suggest that women, on average, take different decisions than men. In the pandemic, the authors argue, this led to different outcomes.
Are we asking the right questions?
While the researchers used a variety of methods to capture omitted variable bias, there are still considerable shortcomings to this study. Most notably, the sample of female leaders is very small. Out of 194 countries included in the study, only 19 are led by women. One can hardly extrapolate any general findings of female leaders based on this sample. Secondly, research from the other disciplines which the authors point to for possible explanations for gender differences is, at best, inconclusive. Isolating gender as an explanatory variable is extremely difficult and one would need a very large number of studies to synthesise any reliable results.
Lastly, we should carefully reflect on what the added value of asking these kinds of questions is. While this particular study is rather favourable to women, it also feeds into gender stereotypes, comparing seemingly emotional women with rational men. The finding that countries which entered lockdown sooner rather than later saved more lives would have been a valid and interesting finding in itself - without trying to force a connection to the political leaders’ gender.
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