Good leadership has nothing to do with gender — it's about competence
(AAP Image/Lukas Coch/POOL)
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, confessed last week in an interview that he felt “mentally fragile”, “vulnerable” and “more down than in the past” because of the coronavirus crisis. While his candour and openness are admirable, there are nonetheless question marks about Sadiq Kahn’s judgement. That’s not just because in the middle of one of the worst crises to hit London and the world he decided to take time to do profile media interviews, but because he put the spotlight on his own feelings while people in the country are dying each day by the hundreds. Remember what happened when Megan Markle naively chose to put the spotlight on her own feelings while visiting Africa a few months ago? She was pilloried for it.
Sadiq Khans’s admission of fragility underlines that politicians are only human. But it also highlights the huge gap between female and male politicians: the London mayor’s words have gone largely unnoticed; while a similar admission of mental fragility from a female politician would have led to immediate questions about her own suitability and aptness for the job. Female politicians constantly fight against a stereotyped perception of weakness, so it is inconceivable that they could admit fragility and vulnerability when facing an all consuming economic and public health crisis.
Weakness is not the only area where women and men are perceived differently in politics — moral and ethical judgements are applied in a different way. It would be unthinkable for a female politician to aspire to lead a country if it was known that she had not taken parental responsibility for all of her own children, as is the case with the Prime Minister Boris Johnson. And can you imagine what would be said about a female politician if in the middle of a pandemic that led to the highest death rate in Europe she decided to miss five emergency meetings to be on holiday with her boyfriend, or husband? Female politicians have to prove their value every minute of their tenure. They simply cannot afford to behave that way.
The coronavirus crisis has brought female political leadership to the fore. Many are praising the handling of the coronavirus crisis by female leaders in Germany, New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Taiwan or Ethiopia, as examples of rational, competent, transparent and compassionate leadership. But claiming that the leaders of those countries are competently handling the crisis because they are women is as absurd — and sexist — as thinking that all female politicians are weak by nature, or that they should be held to higher ethical standards than their male counterparts. There are plenty of governments led by men, from Greece to South Korea, Portugal or Ireland, that are handling the crisis in a rational and competent way. If some women leaders are handling the crisis effectively, it is because of their own ability and competence as individuals, not because they happen to be female or male: Angela Merkel does not make all female leaders sensible and competent, just as Theresa May did not make all female leaders inept.
The reaction from politicians to the coronavirus does not depend on their gender, but on their level of populism. The more populist the politician, the more prone they are to disregarding science and expertise and the more disinclined they are to deliver “tough news” to the public. If we had a Marine Le Pen President of France or a Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner President of Argentina, their reactions may not have been much different to those of Presidents Bolsonaro or Trump. We just happen to have fewer female populists in charge of countries, precisely because people often demand higher standards from female politicians than from their male colleagues.
Just as in politics, it is often claimed in business that powerful women are more disliked than men: it is argued that women are penalised if they are assertive and that, unlike men, women cannot get away with unreasonable behaviour such as belittling or shouting at employees. This may indeed be true. But the answer to such a disparity should be ensuring that all leaders stick to the stringent standards that should apply to all people in power, instead of allowing women leaders to get away with as much unacceptable behaviour as some men do. People who belittle those working for them should not be business leaders. And people who are self-pitying, irresponsible or lazy should not hold political power, be they women or men.
