"When Women Rule, We Seem Safer": Female Leadership And COVID Death Rates - N. Kristof

President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan at a military base this spring amid the coronavirus pandemic.Ritchie B. Tongo/EPA, via Shutterstock

"When Women Rule, We Seem Safer"

By Nicholas Kristof Opinion Columnist

I compiled coronavirus death rates for 21 reasonably matched countries around the world, 13 led by women and eight by men, and the difference was huge. On average, death rates from Covid-19 were more than five times as high in the nations led by male leaders.

If the United States had the death rate found on average in female-led countries, we would have saved 102,000 lives of the 114,000 lost to the virus.

That’s my column today, and I talked to experts to explore whether the statistical difference is real and, if so, what’s behind it. Lots of fascinating theories. Please do read!

The Fine Print

My column says that “virtually every country” with a death rate from the coronavirus of more than 150 per million inhabitants is male led. I had to include the “virtually” because of two exceptions.

One is Switzerland, where the president of the Swiss Confederation is a woman, but she has much less influence on health policy than leaders in other countries. The other is San Marino, the microstate in Europe that has two leaders, one male and one female. But it is astonishing how “virtually” every country that has bungled Covid-19 is male-led — and disproportionally by bombastic, authoritarian men in the mold of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson or Jair Bolsonaro.