Written by Rhaña Santos & Sheila Delos Angeles
The countries and places that have coped better than others show a pattern — most are led by women.
According to the United Nations, more women in positions of power are essential in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Yet, there remains to be a great disparity between men and women leaders in the world. When it comes to leadership, men tend to have the upper hand. Numbers indicate that from national executive positions to local government, women are still underrepresented. Research also shows that women are held to higher standards and have to prove themselves more than their male counterparts. In the case of elections, voters are hesitant and seem less ready to choose women candidates. Despite the evident gender gap, women leaders worldwide and in the Philippines are debunking these stereotypes through their exemplary leadership amidst a public health and economic crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic.
Faced with an unseen enemy whose fatalities are quickly rising, all world leaders are put under a microscope with their emergency pandemic response. Swift and decisive actions are expected of them to mitigate the spread of the disease, strength in the face of the unknown. These characteristics are stereotypically appropriated for men, hence the firmly held belief that men are better leaders. Despite this, in the face of the current pandemic, many women leaders prove to be more competent. The stability and bruteness associated with strong male leaders were barriers to an efficient pandemic response. Strong-arm leaders tend to adopt a militarized response that is misdirected and ineffective. Here are some of the women leaders whose exemplary pandemic response should be praised.
President Zuzana Čaputová of Slovakia was newly sworn in — just roughly less than a year — when she was presented with the responsibility of leading her country as it weathers through a pandemic. Mask-wearing itself was already implemented as mandatory even before the World Health Organization formally released an advisory for it. Recently, there have been talks of testing everyone over the age of 10 for COVID-19 because the government doesn’t view harsh lockdowns as an adequate catch-all solution. Just like Čaputová, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark was also freshly elected in 2019. The country was one of the first in Europe to step out of a lockdown and reopen their schools in 2020. Their administration’s overall strategy is characterized first as suppression through the enforcement of social distancing, lockdown, and mass testing, then as mitigation to reduce the detrimental effects of the pandemic. The move is generally seen as a success because the populace retained their trust in the government and said that their lives did not change much before and after the outbreak.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand is also on its road to economic recovery. Just like the other women leaders, Ardern also proceeded with urgency and caution. Ardern was praised for doing her addresses warmly and using easily digestible information. In one of her speeches, she said that the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny are also considered essential workers. While other countries were going through extended and repetitive lockdowns before August 2020, they only went through one which also lasted for one month. Coupled with mass testing and contact tracing, the government also effectively communicated with the people in a centralized and efficient manner. Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir also stresses how humility and an attentive ear to science were the key principles she used in leading the country’s pandemic response. Iceland was classified as one of the top 10 safest countries in the world for COVID-19 and also had one of the lowest deaths. She emphasized that this isn’t a time to amplify one’s ego because the scientists are the ones that she herself is learning from. They didn’t even need to close down the kindergarten and primary schools because the virus was contained, so limiting school hours was all that was necessary back in May 2020.
Europe isn’t the only place where women have been at the forefront of prudent, effective, and quick leadership. Tsai Ing-wen, the President of Taiwan, defied the expectations of the rest of the world. Despite the country being geographically close to the virus’s origin, the country could still effectively contain the virus. They were strictly monitoring the incoming passengers from China as early as December. The government also intervened to prevent mass buying by producing and distributing medical-grade masks, rationed later on. Recognizing that international cooperation is essential to managing a pandemic, they also had the latitude to donate masks to seriously affected countries.
When talking about women leaders in the Philippines, one cannot neglect the woman occupying the second highest seat in the land. Vice President Leni Robredo has been very visible and active in her pandemic response. Her office is often seen to be at the forefront of relief efforts from the emergency flash flood response to pandemic amelioration programs. Another notable leader is Senator Risa Hontiveros, who is a proud health and women’s rights advocate. In light of the pandemic, the senator proposed a bill that seeks to mitigate gender-based violence during emergencies by strengthening response measures and greater inclusion in creating an inter-agency task force. In a more localized setting, there are numerous notable women leaders. The mayor of Isabela City, Mayor Sitti Djalia Turabin-Hataman, received praises for her early and decisive pandemic response. Even before the onset of the general community quarantine (GCQ) from the executive, she enforced early preventive measures through the Isabela City COVID 19 Task Force. Similarly, Mayor Jeri Mae Calderon is also given credit for her immediate implementation of preventive measures within Rizal, specifically for her rigid “No Mask, No Entry” policy in wet markets and her visibility in the checkpoints within their city. Another mayor visibly present is Mayor Donya Tesoro, who personally distributes relief goods for the residents of Tarlac. In addition to this, she considers the studies showing a spike in unwanted pregnancies because of the lockdown. Hence her relief goods include birth control contraceptives.
Numerous studies have been conducted to discover the differences in leadership styles among genders and the reasons behind women leaders’ success in mitigating the aftereffects of the pandemic. A study made by Harvard Business Review found out that women excel in taking initiatives, being resilient and results-oriented, and acting with integrity and honesty. The study takes an especially profound exemplification in the emerging international and national women leaders who have been competently leading their constituencies through a pandemic. All of them treated the virus as a serious issue at the onset and didn’t belittle, joke, or dismiss the gravity of an impending health crisis. The simple formula of sticking to the fundamentals — mass testing, contact tracing, and mask-wearing — was a big chunk of their respective plans’ success.
Harvard’s study also concluded that women, in fact, make better leaders according to their co-workers, and the reason why they’re not often in such a position of power is because of a lack of opportunity, not of capability. An underlying factor is also how they’re generally less confident in their skills than men even if they do measure up equally to them.
Politics can be analyzed at the level of gender and through the language of feminism. The goal of feminist politics is to level the field between genders and ultimately pursue intersectional social justice. This struggle also persists in leadership positions which women have not taken space in until recently. A feminist predisposition certainly does not see gender as a direct guarantee of good leadership, but recognizes the power imbalance by virtue of one’s gender. We must move away from gendered politics believing that a particular gender is predisposed to certain characteristics. As apparent from the leaders above, the Philippines still has a long way to combat gender norms. Women leaders still remain few and far in between, and only occupy localized positions as opposed to other Scandinavian countries whose chief executives are women. The realizations from this pandemic should be an eye-opener for a more inclusive and cooperative future of leadership.
Women are making history by occupying chief positions that were once dominated by men, but this doesn’t mean that the struggle to own these spaces is over.
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