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Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? Gender, Power and Leadership in Troubled Times

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorEmilia Belknap,Laura Shaw,Meryl Kenny
Published date01 June 2020
Date01 June 2020
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/2041905820933365
4 POLITICAL INSIGHT • JUNE 2020
Two Steps Forward,
One Step Back? Gender,
Power and Leadership
in Troubled Times
Commitments to gender equality in politics abound – so why are
women still under-represented? Emilia Belknap, Laura Shaw and
Meryl Kenny examine two recent leadership contests in Britain and
the United States.
‘The secret weapon in the
ght against coronavirus
is women’, proclaimed
The
Guardian
in April 2020. The
paper was not alone in highlighting that
many of the countries thought to be
initially tackling this global pandemic
most eectively – Germany, Taiwan, New
Zealand, Finland, Iceland – were led by
women. A range of columnists speculated
that this was because women leaders were
more decisive, more compassionate, more
deferential to expertise, cooler in a crisis.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
attracted particular praise for her swift
decision-making and eective messaging;
appearing at news briengs alongside
expert health ocials, whilst also streaming
videos of herself at home and telling
children that the Tooth Fairy and the Easter
Bunny counted as ‘essential workers’.
The headline attention given to these
women, however, belies the underlying fact
that globally, women political leaders are
few and far between. In general, the rule
is ‘the higher the fewer’: over 75 per cent
of parliamentarians worldwide are men
© Press Association

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