Why women make such good leaders

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks at the Labour Election Day party after the Labour Party won New Zealand's general election in Auckland on October 16, 2020.

Photo credit: Michael Bradley | AFP

What you need to know:

  • As it stands today, New Zealand, a country of five million people,” has recorded one of the world’s lowest Covid-19 deaths — only 25 — and slightly under 2,000 infections
  • Ms Ardern might be the leader of a country with a population smaller than some Kenyan counties, but her leadership acumen has been the stuff of Harvard leadership scholars, compelling us to glean what we can.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was this week re-elected for a second term in a landslide victory. Adored and admired across the world for her “go hard, go early” response to Covid-19 and immortalised in powerful editorials in the New York Times “America Deserves a Leader as Good as Jacinda Ardern” (March 11, 2019), at 40, Ms Arden is a paragon of good and efficient leadership.

As it stands today, New Zealand, a country of five million people,” has recorded one of the world’s lowest Covid-19 deaths — only 25 — and slightly under 2,000 infections. This successful handling of the pandemic is attributed to one of the world’s strictest lockdown regimes she decreed.

And now, New Zealanders have rewarded their leader with a “commanding majority” as The Guardian put it, with Arden’s Labour Party winning 49 per cent of the vote. This is Labour party’s greatest performance yet, since the 1990s, when the New Zealanders revised their electoral system.

Swift legislative response

In the three years of her leadership — since she was first elected in 2017 — Arden has proved her mettle as a global leader as evidenced in her careful manoeuvring of some key unfortunate events that defined her first term.

Among them was her swift legislative response to the killing of 51 Muslim worshippers at two Christchurch mosques. There was also the volcanic eruption in White Island that killed 21. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic that cemented her position as a progressive, empathetic and level-headed leader.

On top of that, she and her partner welcomed their first child, making her the second world leader to give birth while in office, after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto — another of my favourites.

Ms Ardern might be the leader of a country with a population smaller than some Kenyan counties, but her leadership acumen has been the stuff of Harvard leadership scholars, compelling us to glean what we can.

Underestimate people

Several key lessons emerge from her story. First, Ardern’s achievements are not shabby for a former amateur DJ. We must learn to suppress the urge to underestimate people, especially the young, because you never know what the future holds for them.

Second, when women lead, new ideas, new voices and new perspectives emerge. There is a clear demonstration of the power of empathetic and selfless leadership. When women lead, science not egos, takes centre stage.

When women lead, seldom will they wait until 200,000 people have died from Covid-19, because women leaders understand that one life lost is one too many.

Ms Arden is the epitome of what a world leader should be, and can be. May we use her example to finally understand that we do not need women at the table of decision making to fulfil certain gender requirements, but because women truly can lead.