Countries Led By Women Handled Coronavirus Better, Study Finds | World news



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Countries led by women had “consistently and significantly better” results for Covid-19, research seems to show, blocking earlier and suffering on average half the deaths than those led by men.

The relatively early success of leaders like Germany’s Angela Merkel, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, Taiwanese Tsai Ing-wen and Finland’s Sanna Marin has so far attracted many titles, but few. academic attention.

Analysis of 194 countries, published by the Center for Economic Policy Research and the World Economic Forum, suggests that the difference is real and “can be explained by the proactive and coordinated policy responses” adopted by women leaders.

Country comparisons

Even after clear and frequently cited outliers like New Zealand and Germany – and the United States for male leaders – were removed from the statistics, the study found that the case for the relative success of women leaders only got stronger.

“Our results clearly indicate that women leaders reacted faster and more decisively to potential deaths,” said Supriya Garikipati, development economist at the University of Liverpool, co-author with Uma Kambhampati of the University of Reading.

“In almost all cases, they locked themselves in earlier than male leaders under similar circumstances. While this may have longer-term economic implications, it has certainly helped these countries save lives, as evidenced by the significantly lower death toll in these countries.


The two researchers said they analyzed the different policy responses and the total number of Covid-19 cases and deaths through May 19, introducing a number of variables to help analyze the raw data and make reliable comparisons between the countries.

Among the data sets considered were GDP, total population, population density and the proportion of elderly residents, as well as annual health expenditure per capita, openness to international travel and the level of equality between sexes in society in general.

As only 19 of the nearly 200 countries were headed by women, the authors also created so-called “nearest neighbors” countries to compensate for the small sample size, associating Germany, New Zealand and Bangladesh with Britain, Ireland and Pakistan ruled by men.

“This analysis clearly confirms that when countries headed by women are compared to countries similar to them on a range of characteristics, they performed better, with fewer cases and fewer deaths,” Garikipati said.

She added that while women leaders “had a risk aversion to life,” locking up their country much earlier than men, it also suggested that they were “more willing to take risks in the area of the economy ”.

When compared on the basis of ‘openness to travel’, countries led by women did not experience significantly lower Covid cases, but reported a drop in deaths, the researchers found, concluding that this might suggest “better policies and better compliance”.

Garikipati said the evidence of a “significant and systematic difference” showed that even taking into account the institutional context and other controls, “being led by women has provided countries with an advantage in the crisis. current ”.

The researchers said they hoped the study “would serve as a starting point to inform the discussion about the influence of national leaders in explaining differences in countries’ Covid outcomes.”

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