Want a well-run pandemic response? Put a woman in charge
Source: Prospect
As Boris Johnson’s Britain notches up 100,000 deaths, the statistics for female-run countries are incomparably better. But is the connection as simple as it looks?
If it’s possible for a plague to have a pin up, then Jacinda Ardern is it. She is the female prime minister whose quick and decisive actions have succeeded in holding Covid-19 deaths in New Zealand down to just 25 in a population of around five million. On any metric, Ardern has one of the best records in the world for containing the deadly virus. Is it the Jacinda effect? Or are women leaders better at battling the disease?
Ardern, now in her second term, had already established a record for meeting terrible national adversity with grace and empathy after the mosque shootings in Christchurch in 2019 which left 51 dead. She also has the geographical bonus of being prime minister of distant and sparsely populated New Zealand. Locking down and shutting out the world was devastating to the economy, but it was a whole lot easier than locking down Britain.
But Ardern’s relative success in limiting the impact of Covid-19 is not unique. However brutal it feels to reduce individual deaths to global statistics, there is a striking correlation between countries with women leaders and low death rates.
Click here the full article published by Prospect on 29 January 2021.
As Boris Johnson’s Britain notches up 100,000 deaths, the statistics for female-run countries are incomparably better. But is the connection as simple as it looks?
If it’s possible for a plague to have a pin up, then Jacinda Ardern is it. She is the female prime minister whose quick and decisive actions have succeeded in holding Covid-19 deaths in New Zealand down to just 25 in a population of around five million. On any metric, Ardern has one of the best records in the world for containing the deadly virus. Is it the Jacinda effect? Or are women leaders better at battling the disease?
Ardern, now in her second term, had already established a record for meeting terrible national adversity with grace and empathy after the mosque shootings in Christchurch in 2019 which left 51 dead. She also has the geographical bonus of being prime minister of distant and sparsely populated New Zealand. Locking down and shutting out the world was devastating to the economy, but it was a whole lot easier than locking down Britain.
But Ardern’s relative success in limiting the impact of Covid-19 is not unique. However brutal it feels to reduce individual deaths to global statistics, there is a striking correlation between countries with women leaders and low death rates.
Click here the full article published by Prospect on 29 January 2021.