Women’s leadership during COVID-19 and beyond
Leaders: Jennifer Piscopo (guest speaker) and Jennifer Deal
Tuesday May 4
8:30am PT / 11:30am ET / 3:30pm GMT

You may have heard that women leaders were better at managing the COVID-19 crisis, whether as business executives or politicians. Pundits celebrated the success of cool-headed crisis managers like New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, and criticized the leaders like Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who blustered and scoffed their way through the pandemic’s early months. In this session, we’ll explore this narrative about women leaders as better, considering:

• Does the idea that women leaders are better crisis managers hold up to close scrutiny and statistical analysis? If so, what did women leaders do differently during COVID-19 and why did it matter?
• How do gender stereotypes shape our expectations about women leaders, especially during crisis? What are the organizational consequences of this kind of gendered thinking?
• Is the pandemic another glass cliff that threatens the success and tenure of women leaders?
• If we think about governments as organizations, what lessons does pandemic policymaking (conducted under conditions of urgency and even secrecy) offer for companies and for female and male executives?

Jennifer M. Piscopo is Associate Professor of Politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. Her research on gender, political representation, and political leadership has appeared in over twenty peer-reviewed journals and numerous edited volumes. She consults regularly for international organizations such as UN Women. Her public-facing writing on women and political empowerment has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Review, Ms. Magazine, and The Smithsonian.