WOMEN leaders saved more lives from Covid-19 than their male counterparts, according to a new study.

Men such as Prime Minister Boris Johnson have come under criticism for not enforcing stringent control restrictions soon enough, while women like New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern have been heralded for their swift action.

Now developmental economists have determined that nations led by women largely locked down earlier and suffered half as many coronavirus deaths on average as those with men in charge.

Professors Supriya Garikipati and Uma Kambhampati say their results stand even when "outliers" like New Zealand, Germany – and the USA for male leaders – are removed from statistics involving 194 states.

That's due to "proactive" policy choices, Garikipati said. She stated: “Our results clearly indicate that women leaders reacted more quickly and decisively in the face of potential fatalities.

The National:

“In almost all cases, they locked down earlier than male leaders in similar circumstances.

“While this may have longer-term economic implications, it has certainly helped these countries to save lives, as evidenced by the significantly lower number of deaths in these countries.”

The Liverpool University pair considered GDP, total population, urban population density and the proportion of elderly residents as well as annual health expenditure per capita, openness to international travel and general level of societal gender equality.

Just 19 of the 194 states included – the UK was treated as one country – were led by women and they created "nearest neighbour" countries across the chosen demographics to balance out that small sample size. Female-led Serbia was compared with Israel, and the UK with Angela Merkel's Germany. Ardern's New Zealand was contrasted with Leo Varadkar's Ireland.

Garikipati said: “Nearest neighbour analysis clearly confirms that when women-led countries are compared to countries similar to them along a range of characteristics, they have performed better, experiencing fewer cases as well as fewer deaths.”

Garikipati said that though the decision to lockdown earlier this may play into gender stereotypes around risk aversion, this ignores the risk taken to economies. This, she said, suggests “risk aversion may manifest differently in different domains, with women leaders being significantly more risk averse in the domain of human life, but more risk taking in the domain of the economy”.

When openness to travel was considered, the team found female-led countries did not experience significantly lower Covid-19 cases, but did report lower deaths – suggesting “better policies and compliance in these countries”.

As well as omitting Scotland-specific data, the team was unable to include female-led Taiwan in its work because the World Bank no longer provides data for that state, separately China.

Garkipati said: “Our findings show that Covid outcomes are systematically and significantly better in countries led by women and, to some extent, this may be explained by the proactive policy responses they adopted.

"Being female-led has provided countries with an advantage in the current crisis.”