Female-led countries had half as many Covid deaths as those with male leaders, analysis finds

Female leaders locked down earlier and suffered half as many Covid-19 deaths compared to male leaders, a new study has revealed.

The relative early success of leaders such as New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Germany’s Angela Merkel, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen has attracted significant attention in the media, but there has been little academic evidence to suggest that female leaders have decisively handled the pandemic better than men until now.

However an analysis of 194 countries, published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the World Economic Forum, appears to show that women leaders acted “more quickly and decisively” to save lives by locking down their nations early, leading to “systemically and significantly better” outcomes for their citizens than countries led by men.

Researchers at the universities of Liverpool and Reading analysed the differences in policy responses to the pandemic until May 19, as well as the total number of coronavirus cases and deaths across the 194 countries to determine that being female-led has “provided countries with an advantage” during the crisis.

“Our results clearly indicate that women leaders reacted more quickly and decisively in the face of potential fatalities,” said Prof Supriya Garikipati, co-author of the study alongside Professor Uma Kambhampati.

“In almost all cases, they locked down earlier than male leaders in similar circumstances.

“While this may have longer-term economic implications, it has certainly helped these countries to save lives, as evidenced by the significantly lower number of deaths in these countries.”

To reach this conclusion, the academics considered GDP, total population, urban population density and the number of elderly residents. They also looked at annual health expenditure per capita, openness to international travel and the general level of gender equality.

As only 19 of the 194 countries are led by women, researchers created “nearest neighbour” countries with similar population sizes to offset the small sample size, pairing female-led Germany, New Zealand and Bangladesh with male-led Britain, Ireland and Pakistan.

“Nearest neighbour analysis clearly confirms that when women-led countries are compared to countries similar to them along a range of characteristics, they have performed better, experiencing fewer cases as well as fewer deaths,” said Prof Garikipati.

While this may play into gender stereotypes around risk aversion, Prof Garikipati argues that “while women leaders were risk averse with regard to lives, they were prepared to take significant risks with their economies by locking down early”.

She added that risk aversion “may manifest differently in different domains”, with women leaders “significantly more risk averse” when it comes to human life but “more risk-taking” when it comes to the economy.

The researchers also found that even when having similar ‘openness to travel’, which can make a country more vulnerable to the virus, female-led countries did not experience significantly lower Covid-19 cases - but they did report lower deaths. This suggests “better policies and compliance in these countries”, they said.

While there are some outliers to this, such as Belgium, which is female-led and has exceptionally high Covid-19 case and death numbers, the researchers still conclude that generally, “proactive policy responses” to the pandemic adopted by female leaders have provided countries with an advantage.

“Our findings show that Covid outcomes are systematically and significantly better in countries led by women and, to some extent, this may be explained by the proactive policy responses they adopted,” said Prof Garikipati.

“Even accounting for institutional context and other controls, being female-led has provided countries with an advantage in the current crisis.”