Female leaders stand out among the premiers of countries that have seen early successes in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister is a shining example in this category. With a background in communication, the gracious PM of New Zealand is an empathetic leader, and it clearly shows. Her messaging has been consistent, clear, surprisingly at the same time soothing and sobering.

Compare this scenario with that of the Finance Minister of India.  She has everything to corroborate the “castle in the air” narrative painted by the regime, but when asked about the performance on the economic front, she simply walks out of the conference hall. At Least she has the courage to come in front of the camera in press conference which has long eluded the Pradhan sevak.

Jacinda Ardern can be called as the most effective leader in the world right now. Though two new cases of Covid19 was found in the country on 17th June 2020, from people who arrived from Britain, an earlier video of the healthcare professionals leaving the hospital after discharging the final cured patient had taken the social media by storm. New Zealand had defeated Covid19. The two cases were from people having flight history from Britain, who were allowed to go out of quarantine on a compassionate ground.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel is a former research scientist who holds a doctorate in quantum chemistry. She is known less as a commander in chief and more a scientist in chief at Berlin. Merkel had deployed uncharacteristic sentimentality, coupled with her characteristic rationality, to guide the country through what can be classifies as an appreciably successful battle against COVID-19. Germany under her leadership boasted one of the lowest fatality rates in the world in this pandemic.

Women-led Switzerland had launched a multimillion-dollar multilateral relief fund alongside it’s own preventive measures to support poorer countries’ pandemic recovery. What do the success stories such as Denmark, Finland and Iceland have in common with those in countries like Hong Kong and Taiwan, halfway around the world? They’re all being led and run by women.

Response of the people of the respective countries to the efforts of their corresponding female leaders is striking and unavoidable. Angela Merkel gets high marks for reasoning rather than rousing. New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern earns praise and accolades for her “clarity and compassion.” Commentators commend Canada’s numerous female chief medical officers, who have taken the lead on health policy whilst Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in quarantine, for their calm and consistency.

India is unique in the sense that you need not have some minimum educational background or technical expertise as proof of your ability to lead. One just needs to subscribe to a particular kind of ideology to gain the wherewithal to be a people’s representative. This is true for both male and female leaders in India. Leaders with zero performance get all the appreciation, while on the other hand, when a professional journalist, Nidhi Razdan gets to teach at Harvard University, all the ideological whiners cry out foul game. It is because they are ignorant about the idea of professors of practice where a professional associated in his or her domain gets to teach the subject at Ivy league universities. Another female leader worth mentioning in Indian polity is Smriti Irani. She is unique in the sense that despite not being a graduate she managed to be the human resources development minister of the world’s largest democracy, responsible for educating the children and youth of the country. Do take some time to let that sink in deep. This brings out the other side of the story where just under the guise of women empowerment ideological subscribers and rabble rousers get to lead rather than domain experts in the field of public policy.

Decades of research show that female leaders, in their leadership style are more likely to be democratic or participative and less autocratic which implies that they invite subordinates to participate on the decision-making table They incorporate multiple points of view of a problem which helps in long drawn multifaceted battles. If one visualizes a problem (take the current pandemic situation as an example) as a cube, a lady would more likely look at it from all the perspectives possible. This allows her to solve the problem more efficiently. Equally relevant in this life and death situation of the Covid19 pandemic, is the proven fact that women more often lead through motivation, engaging  shared interests of the followers, while men tend to rely on incentives almost exclusively.

It is important to note that they are not doing well as leaders just because they are biologically female, it is also because of their actions and thoughts which can be mirrored by males at leadership position if they want to. It is necessary to reflect from the perspective of a constructivist here, that the socially created identities like leaders, soldiers, farmers, and others do not have gender implicit within themselves. That a person is a male or female is a core fact. But the fact that who is leader or farmer is a socially constructed fact which creates a bias. These identities have been historically given the role under specific gender because of the power play of male-centric egoism.

That is what is being undone by the female leaders of the countries winning the war against Covid19. They are excelling because they have good policies, clear communication and information-sharing approach. Most importantly they are leaders who listen. History of politics is replete with such examples where leaders who listen have been sidelined or made a footnote in the greater story. These leaders are breaking that traditional cycle.

Effective leaders listen to public instead of dishing out speeches in rabble rousing tone and chest thumping gestures with no metric and scale on result-based actions. To the extent that female heads of state are performing better than men against the coronavirus crisis, it is because of the uncovering of the gender power play which had created a bias against the female leaders. As a result, they performed better because they are expected to be and they have learned to be more democratic in their leadership approach, more collaborative and more compassionate and empathic communicators.

Throughout history women have long struggled to overcome double standards, demeaning harassment, misogyny and gender stereotypes in politics. The general order has been that ‘men waging wars and women tending wounds’, a prime example being Florence Nightingale in the context of the Crimear War of mid-nineteenth century. Now the efforts of women are paying dividends in matters of life and death on a global scale.

This pandemic and the success of the few women led countries has an important learning outcome for the world in general. May be, the world will not experience any more wars if women with suitable education and expertise take lead of the countries on the international platform through constructive collaboration doning the roles of  either  Prime ministers or Presidents. This can be complemented by men taking a step back at handling scenarios back in their own countries in specific domains of national politics. May be that would allow the world to move towards less hunger, less poverty and a sustainable green healthy future. But certain questions remain in this male dominated truculent world order.

Will the world learn from this pandemic scenario and give the welfare driven feminist perspective it’s rightful place in the domain of international polity, relations and diplomacy?  Or will it carry on with its eons old drum beating male chauvinism-based braggadocio whose baseline behavior is mercantilism and divide et empera?

Only time will tell us.