Are women leaders significantly better at controlling the contagion during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Abstract: Recent media articles have suggested that women-led countries are doing better in terms of their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine an ensemble of public health metrics to assess the control of COVID-19 epidemic in women-versus men-led countries worldwide based on data available up to June 3. The median of the distribution of median time-varying effective reproduction number for women- and men-led countries were 0.89 and 1.14 respectively with the 95% two-sample bootstrap-based confidence interval for the difference (women – men) being [−0.34, 0.02]. In terms of scale of testing, the median percentage of population tested were 3.28% (women), 1.59% (men) [95% CI: (−1.29%, 3.60%)] with test positive rates of 2.69% (women) and 4.94% (men) respectively. It appears that though statistically not significant, countries led by women have an edge over countries led by men in terms of public health metrics for controlling the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide.

Keywords: Public health; public policy.