Ann or Peter? Gender Stereotypes and Leadership during a Pandemic Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic posed new challenges for leaders. It required behavior change and self-compliance of the public. Stereotypically feminine qualities such as compassion and good approach to people may have helped achieving such goals, thus rendering this pandemic as a "feminine crisis". The special nature of this crisis, and the saliency in the media of female-led countries successfully managing the pandemic, raises the question whether female leaders would be perceived as more competent to manage such a crisis? Using an experimental study on a representative sample in Poland, we assess whether female prime minister candidates, or candidates with feminine traits, are advantaged when their competence to manage a large-scale pandemic is assessed. We find that contrary to a national security and an economic cri-sis, where male or masculine candidates are advantaged, women, or feminine candidates, have no advantage in managing a COVID-19 type crisis. Furthermore, conservative partici-pants seem to perceive male candidates as more competent, even in the pandemic context. All differences are small in magnitude, and yet suggest that even when assessed in a potentially “feminine crisis” women do not fare better than men, whereas men still fare better in typically male crisis.