IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0244531.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gender in the time of COVID-19: Evaluating national leadership and COVID-19 fatalities

Author

Listed:
  • Leah C Windsor
  • Gina Yannitell Reinhardt
  • Alistair J Windsor
  • Robert Ostergard
  • Susan Allen
  • Courtney Burns
  • Jarod Giger
  • Reed Wood

Abstract

In this paper we explore whether countries led by women have fared better during the COVID-19 pandemic than those led by men. Media and public health officials have lauded the perceived gender-related influence on policies and strategies for reducing the deleterious effects of the pandemic. We examine this proposition by analyzing COVID-19-related deaths globally across countries led by men and women. While we find some limited support for lower reported fatality rates in countries led by women, they are not statistically significant. Country cultural values offer more substantive explanation for COVID-19 outcomes. We offer several potential explanations for the pervasive perception that countries led by women have fared better during the pandemic, including data selection bias and Western media bias that amplified the successes of women leaders in OECD countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Leah C Windsor & Gina Yannitell Reinhardt & Alistair J Windsor & Robert Ostergard & Susan Allen & Courtney Burns & Jarod Giger & Reed Wood, 2020. "Gender in the time of COVID-19: Evaluating national leadership and COVID-19 fatalities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(12), pages 1-26, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0244531
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244531
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0244531
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0244531&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0244531?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Raphael Bruce & Alexsandros Cavgias & Luis Meloni & Mario Remigio, 2021. "Under Pressure: Women's Leadership During the COVID-19 Crisis," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2021_19, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    2. Bruce, Raphael & Cavgias, Alexsandros & Meloni, Luis & Remígio, Mário, 2022. "Under pressure: Women’s leadership during the COVID-19 crisis," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    3. Sreten Simović & Tijana Ivanišević & Bojana Bradić & Svetlana Čičević & Aleksandar Trifunović, 2021. "What Causes Changes in Passenger Behavior in South-East Europe during the COVID-19 Pandemic?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(15), pages 1-11, July.
    4. Gina Yannitell Reinhardt & Carmela Lutmar, 2022. "Disaster diplomacy: The intricate links between disaster and conflict," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 59(1), pages 3-11, January.
    5. Süheyla Üçışık Erbilen & Merve Uysal, 2023. "The Common Point of Countries Successful Policies in the Struggle Against COVID-19: Women Leaders," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(2), pages 21582440231, June.
    6. Maity, Shrabanti & Barlaskar, Ummey Rummana, 2022. "Women's political leadership and efficiency in reducing COVID-19 death rate: An application of technical inefficiency effects model across Indian states," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 82(PB).
    7. Lalisa A. Duguma & Meine van Noordwijk & Peter A. Minang & Kennedy Muthee, 2021. "COVID-19 Pandemic and Agroecosystem Resilience: Early Insights for Building Better Futures," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-22, January.
    8. Bessho, S., 2023. "Elections and COVID-19 benefit payments," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    9. Anderson Reis de Sousa & Jules Ramon Brito Teixeira & Emanuel Missias Silva Palma & Wanderson Carneiro Moreira & Milena Bitencourt Santos & Herica Emilia Félix de Carvalho & Éric Santos Almeida & Raís, 2021. "Psychological Distress in Men during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Brazil: The Role of the Sociodemographic Variables, Uncertainty, and Social Support," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-19, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0244531. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.