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Women don't need to 'lean in' like men – men need to lead more like women

<span>Photograph: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

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Men could learn a thing or two from women, study finds

Jair Bolsonaro reckons he has mold in his lungs. Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, meanwhile, seem to have mold in their brains. Brazil, the US, and the UK have some of the highest death tolls in the world from Covid-19 thanks, in part, to their inept leadership.

While the world’s supposed strongmen have done a pitiful job at handling the pandemic, strong women like New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern and Germany’s Angela Merkel have won praise for their handling of the virus. A new study published by the World Economic Forum now confirms what many have suspected: “Being female-led has provided countries with an advantage in the current crisis.”

Related: AOC represents the future of America: women who refuse to be silenced | Arwa Mahdawi

Because just 19 countries in the world are led by women, it’s hard to draw meaningful conclusions about leadership efficacy just by looking at overall Covid-19 cases and deaths. Instead economists from the University of Liverpool and the University of Reading “matched” female-led countries with their closest neighbour based on socio-demographic and economic characteristics considered important in the transmission of coronavirus. Germany, for example, was matched with the UK; New Zealand with Ireland. Bangladesh, which has a female prime minister, was compared with Pakistan. Serbia, which has a female and openly gay prime minister, was compared with Israel.

“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,” the study’s authors declared. “This is true whether we consider the nearest neighbour … or even five neighbours.”

A key factor in a country’s coronavirus outcomes, according to this study, was the timing of lockdown; “female-led countries locked down significantly earlier, ie when they were seeing fewer deaths (22 fewer) than male-led countries”.

Why did female-led countries lock down earlier? The researchers suggest one explanation might be the fact that women are taught to be more risk-averse than men. At the start of the pandemic a number of male leaders seem to have thought it was macho to act like coronavirus was no big deal. Trump shunned masks and downplayed the severity of the virus. In the UK, Johnson boasted about shaking hands with coronavirus patients in a hospital before he himself was hospitalized for Covid-19. And Bolsonaro famously dismissed Covid-19 “as a little flu” – now his wife has tested positive for it and he’s complaining about moldy lungs.

Another reason female-led countries have had a better response to the pandemic, the study suggests, is differences in male and female styles of leadership. Women are taught to adopt a more “more democratic and participative style” than men.

It’s important to stress, I think, that the big takeaway from this study isn’t that the world would be a lot better off if it was run by women – there are plenty of awful female leaders out there. Rather, the big takeaway is that the world would be better off if more leaders exhibited what we have been trained to think of as “female behaviour”. For decades women have been taught that if we want to get ahead we should “lean in” to male power structures. We should be more assertive and more competitive. We should speak louder, self-promote more, and never ever say sorry. We have been taught that if we want to get ahead we should act like men. Perhaps it’s time we stop doing that and, instead, start telling men that they’ll be more successful if they act like women.

Oprah honors Breonna Taylor on cover of O Magazine

This is a big deal: it’s the first time in its 20-year history that Oprah Winfrey will not be on the cover of her magazine. “We can’t be silent. We have to use whatever megaphone we have to cry for justice,” Oprah stated. Let’s hope Oprah’s powerful megaphone helps deliver justice for Breonna Taylor – it is long overdue.

Gisèle Halimi, trailblazing French-Jewish feminist, dies aged 93

When Halimi was 13, she went on hunger strike so she no longer had to make her brother’s bed. “Today I won my first little piece of freedom,” she wrote in her diary after her parents gave in to her demands three days later. She spent the rest of the life fighting for the freedom of others, and was instrumental in the decriminalization of abortion in France.

‘Wokefishing’ is the latest awful dating trend

It’s when guys pretend to be progressive feminists because they think it’ll help them get laid.

Men are starting ‘bromance’ book clubs

Guys are getting in touch with their feelings by discussing romance novels in all-male book clubs.

EU blocks funding for Polish towns that declared themselves ‘LGBT-Free Zones’

“In March, the International Observatory of Human Rights said one-third of Polish towns had declared themselves ‘free from LGBTI ideology’ since 2019,” CNN reports.

The socially sanctioned love triangles of 18th-century Italy

Take a break from our current hell with this fascinating piece about cicisbei – the extramarital lovers Italian noblewomen used to keep around.

Life hack: invent a male personal assistant

Writer Bess Kalb recently tweeted that a friend of hers set up an email account for her imaginary male assistant. “[P]eople called her ‘difficult’ and ‘impossible’ for having small windows of availability until ‘he’ started running interference and then people just accepted she was fucking busy,” Kalb said. Kalb’s friend isn’t the only one inventing helpful men – a few years a couple of female entrepreneurs fabricated a male co-founder called Keith Mann.

“It would take me days to get a response,” one of the female founders told Fast Company, “but Keith could not only get a response and a status update, but also be asked if he wanted anything else or if there was anything else that Keith needed help with.”

The week in pizza-archy: why is the pizza industry full of right-wingers?

Fast food CEOs across the board tend to favour Republicans, but pizza moguls are particularly prone to rightwing views. “Republican donations among pizza-restaurant owners and executives dwarf those among other fast-food captains in both size and proportion,” the Daily Beast reports. A somewhat distasteful revelation.