What do Erna Solberg, Sanna Marin, Katrín Jakobsdóttir and Mette Frederiksen have in common apart from all four being female prime ministers (of Norway, Finland, Iceland and Denmark, respectively)? The answer is that their countries have much lower rates of Covid-19 infection than male-led neighbouring nations such as Ireland, Sweden and the UK.
Are those facts connected? There’s a growing body of evidence to suggest they may be.
Alongside an overview of gender parity in 100 countries by digital bank N26, it has also noted that Finland, with a population of 5.5 million, has had just over 370 deaths, a rate of around 60 deaths per million people. The UK death rate is more than 10 times that. Of course they are very different countries, but there have been similarly low Covid death rates in the other female-led northern European nations. Norway has seen 57 deaths per 1 million, Iceland 73 and Denmark 135 compared to 412 in Ireland, 626 in Sweden and 820 per 1 million in the UK.
Other countries with a female leader, notably Germany and New Zealand, have also kept Covid infections low.
Analysis earlier this year, published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the World Economic Forum, suggests the difference is real and may be explained by the “proactive and coordinated policy responses” adopted by female leaders.
If there is a correlation between managing Covid and having a woman at the helm, the world would be a better place for knowing that and for other leaders being able to learn from it. The truth, as with everything to do with Covid, is that it is probably too early to make any firm assertions. Daily cases and deaths from the virus in Germany, led by chancellor Angela Merkel, are now rising. The country is closing its non-essential shops and imposing a harsher national lockdown from 16 December.
Those sceptical that individual women in positions of power are very different from men don’t have too far to look. The legacy of Margaret Thatcher as the first female UK prime minister continues to be fiercely debated; but it’s widely agreed that she did little for women’s rights per se. Former home secretary Theresa May created the toxic “hostile environment” that ended in the Windrush scandal. The present UK home secretary, Priti Patel, avows an authoritarian stance that is even harsher than the law and order policies of the 1980s, while her personal style as a leader has led to the resignation of the government’s own independent adviser on ethics. Not much of an advert for female leadership. Depressingly, as Catherine Bennett has written, there are always women prepared to do men’s dirty work.
What really counts is getting to what used to be called the tipping point, generally reckoned as having more than a third of positions of power held by women in any organisation.
UK public services, as in many other countries, still have more women lower down the pay scale and fewer women in senior positions. Research shows that the glass ceiling is still firmly in position for civil servants, NHS staff, local government workers and charities.
Even in Finland, for instance, where most government ministers are women, activists wanting reform on cultural issues have said that having the youngest female leader of a country – prime minister Sanna Marin – counts for little until change has the support of the system behind the prime minister.
This isn’t, in the end, just about women. It’s about parity and about politicians of all genders creating systems that are fair and just for their citizens. This year has highlighted more than any other how existing inequalities, whether gender, race or class, leave people vulnerable to crises. Across Europe, domestic abuse has risen during the pandemic, and Covid has also had a huge impact on the lives of working women. That’s because unpaid care and family responsibilities still fall overwhelmingly on women. More women than men work part-time, creating not just a gender pay gap but a gender pension gap as well.
Human systems will function better when they are more like what nature writer Robert Macfarlane, in his book Underland, describes as the hidden infrastructure of forests. Research has found that forests are supportive communities, connected under the Earth’s surface by a “wood-wide web” of connection, sharing resources and nutrients.
Many women know how hard they still have to work to attain equality with men. And many will also acknowledge that it’s networks, peer support, mentoring, mothers, sisters, friends that enable them to get through.
There are signs of change. The N26 equality survey notes that despite many losses for women this year, Germany has approved landmark legislation setting a legal quota for gender in boardrooms, while more recently (and visibly) Kamala Harris becomes the first female US vice-president on 20 January, 2021, not to mention that more than 23% of US congress members are now female. There is still clearly room for improvement, but all is not lost. Politicians have the opportunity to move in the right direction.