@resist1984 @0 @Br0m3x "Countries sensible enough not to disregard half the population for leadership positions have better policies in the first place." The female leaders are symptoms, not the cause. The Guardian's writer overestimates the role of the leader, as any good member of the patriarchy would. ;)

@Steinar @Br0m3x @0 That is a factor, among others. https://hbr.org/2020/12/research-women-are-better-leaders-during-a-crisis

@resist1984 @Br0m3x @0 Remember such numbers will be extremely culturally biased, and making universal statements across cultures is very complicated. Countries with a culture of machissimo will score very different from countries where leaders are expected to be examples or more nursing characters. As my wife put it in regards to the pandemic, "It's not women being risk averse, it's men being risk-attracted." Which is very much a question of culture. I felt that was missing, from both sources.

@Steinar @0 @Br0m3x Culture is certainly a big factor, and it would be wrong to disregard it. Machissimo & risk attraction attributes work against male leaders no matter where in the world they are. Is a German male more likely to have those attributes than a German female? I believe so.

@resist1984 @0 @Br0m3x My point was simply the signal is complicated, and it is easy to overemphasize gender and underemphasize culture. A woman can be a risk-attracted, irresponsible macho, but if the culture doesn't reward that enough, that woman will never be leader there. If we are talking about an arbitrary German, not Angela Merkel, then we must look at what the arbitrary German decided, and that was having Merkel as chancellor.

@resist1984 @0 @Br0m3x (As for the basic question, which gender makes for the better leaders I'd just like to add I don't protest women being better, as I'm not qualified to hold a strong opinion in the matter. Real life, though, you must choose between individuals not genders, and in humans, pretty much all individual differences are far greater than those prescribed by gender. I live in a country led by a woman, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't our female leader who's done the best job here.)

@Steinar @Br0m3x @0 Where the study is most useful is in countering the conventional wisdom myth that men are better equipped for national security, a myth that prevents female individuals from getting due consideration when the reality is more of an inversion of that. I believe women are /less/ likely to send soldiers into war, which is important for a trigger-happy country like the US.

@0 @Br0m3x @Steinar Anyway, the point to my post was that the OP was Angela Merkel is being accused of betrayal, when in fact she came out ahead in this study. It would be a betrayal for Merkel to /not/ protect the people.

@resist1984

Nobody is accusing the federal chancellor of anything. I have great respect for Dr Merkel even if I often disagree with her policies (not to mention her party's).

But #Germany abhors centralisation and giving a single person or institution too much power, for reasons that should be abundantly clear.

That to me is a red line.

@Br0m3x @Steinar

@0 @Steinar @Br0m3x Not sure about Germany, but the US demonstrates how foolish many local governments can be in pockets of right-wing communities on the fringe where anything goes even when hospitals are ram-packed. Federal govs are better informed and it's the feds who have to manage nationwide resource allocation which includes irresponsible communities.