Kudos to all our female leaders who are fighting from the front

The most exciting thing about this coronavirus pandemic is that it has proved to the world that male leaders can learn a thing or two from our female leaders.

At a global level, women make up less than seven per cent of the world leaders. There are so few female heads of state that one can count them on the fingers of your hands.

But this has not stopped female global leaders from outshining their male counterparts in the face of a global crisis.

I didn’t think to consider this viewpoint until my attention was drawn to some interesting commentaries on CNN, The Guardian and Forbes that noted how female leaders outperformed male leaders in containing the pandemic.

Seven countries, all led by women, have been singled out to have some of the best and most effective Covid-19 responses and some sharp columnists swiftly took note of the unique identifier; they are all women-led.

These countries have been hailed for their swift response to the pandemic, including early mass testing and early lockdowns, which lowered mortality rates. The countries include Germany, New Zealand, Finland, Taiwan, Denmark, Norway and Iceland.

Take the case of Germany, led by the indefatigable Angela Merkel, who, unlike her comrades US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, did not downplay the pandemic and warned Germans that this is “very serious”.

She was among the first world leaders to take this pandemic seriously. She sternly warned Germans that if they were not careful, up to 70 per cent of the population could be infected.

Although infection rates in Germany rank in the top five globally after the US, Spain, Italy and France, the mortality rates in Germany have been impressively low.

Yes, you could argue that this is Germany, where systems actually work, but what about the US and UK, whose death tolls got scarier by the day, and more importantly, whose leaders took this too casually?

Experts have attributed the success of these few countries in handling Covid-19 to several factors, among them — and the most fascinating — that it takes a woman to be twice as good to be even considered for leadership.

Imagine what it takes for a woman to be a president, a prime minister and leader of a country.

Because we live in societies where we hold women to a higher standard, the leadership qualities of these women have sharpened over time, making them more suitable to respond to a crisis of Covid-19 scale.

Some have argued that some female leaders are ‘overqualified’ compared to their male counterparts, which makes sense, if you consider Angela Merkel has a PhD in quantum chemistry.

The other attribute could also be that women leaders are far more empathetic. They are able to empathise with victims, families, caregivers and health workers a lot better than male leaders, placing them at the forefront of fighting disease more humanely than other leaders, say, Trump.

Perhaps, in the same vein, is that female leaders understand that a big ego is the enemy of leadership. As Samantha Power, former US ambassador to the United Nations puts it, women leaders place ‘expertise over ego’.

They are confident enough to be decisive, but also humble enough to listen to the experts and are not afraid to change course when the numbers show a different picture.

In this pandemic, we have seen male leaders completely disregard expert opinion, some vouching for treatments that remain clinically unproven and others fearing that experts are ‘hogging too much limelight’.

Female leaders, according to experts, have no issue taking the back seat and listening to experts.

As we recognise the female leaders showing leadership in these difficult times, I would also like to bring to your attention that young female leaders are also in the frontlines of combating Covid-19.

Aside from Sanna Marin, the prime minister of Finland, who, at 34 years, is the youngest female world leader, there is Dr Kizzmekia Corbett, who, also at 34, is the National Institutes of Health (NIH) lead scientist for coronavirus vaccine research.

We also do not want to forget our own Dr Mercy Mwangangi, whose poise, calmness, seriousness and general lack of razzmatazz characteristic of many local public leaders is a breath of fresh air.

And to the many female doctors, journalists, nurses and healthcare workers showing leadership in their own ways in your spheres of influence, we respect, celebrate and support you.

The writer is the director of the Innovation Centre at Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications;