Today, I came across a very fascinating fact, there are six countries that acted decisively in the wake of COVID-19 and kept their death rates quite down as compared to the other countries. These countries are New Zealand (22 deaths), Taiwan (7 deaths), Iceland (10), Finland (324), Norway (239) and Germany (8,844).
In the case of Germany, it has a robust healthcare system which enabled them to conduct more than 4 million tests and it had around 40,000 ICU beds more than most of its neighboring countries like Italy and France. At one point Germany also offered ICU beds to its neighboring country France as the latter faced acute shortage of ICU beds during the peak of COVID-19 wave. New Zealand has been declared Coronavirus free and lifted all restrictions of social distancing. The bottom-line is all these countries did a magnificent job to contain the pandemic.
All of these countries have two things in common. One is highly effective response to the Coronavirus, second and pertinent of all is, all of them are led by women!
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Arden, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-Wen; Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir; Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin, only 34; and Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg.
Let’s compare these figures with the six worst hit countries by the pandemic, USA led by President Donald Trump has over 2 million cases with more than 100,000 deaths reported. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Vladimir Puttin in Russia, Boris Johnson in UK and followed by the fascist Narendra Modi in India.
These heads of states have also one thing in common aside from failure in containment of pandemic in their countries. That is their dictatorial nature and lack of empathy towards their people.
We notice that all of these successful “female” heads of state have empathy and connectivity towards their people. Moreover, they applied science to counter the virus and got successful.
German Chancellor Merkel went on TV and explained her public, the science and strategy of her government in simple ways about massive testing. Same goes with Iceland’s PM Katrín Jakobsdóttir who followed Merkel’s policy of massive testing and contact tracing strategy to keep the death count low.
New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern connected with her people and engaged them thoroughly in order to ensure one of the strictest lockdowns and adherence to the safety guidelines. Denmark’s PM did the same thing, her appealing speeches and clear instructions to the nation have been widely praised. She has even managed to show a sense of fun, posting a clip on Facebook of herself doing the dishes while singing along to 1980s Danish songs during the nation’s weekly TV lockdown singalong.
Let’s have a scholarly insight on why these female leaders did well as compared to the other leaders. Professor of politics at King’s College, London, Rosie Campbell, opines that leaders who displayed humility against the COVID-19 have been proved the most effective leaders.
While the global leaders like Trump and Modi belittle the crisis, a group of women leaders have proved their leadership skills which is direly needed in the midst of a global pandemic.
