Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1 Non-Communicable Diseases Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran
2 Research Center for Traditional Medicine and History of Medicine, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran
3 Student Research Committee, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran
4 Tabriz Health Services Management Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
Abstract
Background: This study compared male and female leaders’ management of the COVID-19 pandemic using key indices.
Methods: We conducted an ecological study. Data on COVID-19 for 213 countries were collected from the Worldometer website. The cumulative incidence of cases and deaths, case fatality rate, recovery rate, and rate of screening tests were computed. When present, the gender of the head of the state, head of government, and health minister was determined using Wikipedia. The study used an ANOVA test to compare COVID-19 indices by the gender of the state leaders and health ministers, along with non-parametric tests like Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U because of using aggregated variables.
Results: In the parametric analysis, we found no significant difference in most key indices related to the COVID-19 pandemic between the male- and female-led countries, except for the COVID-19 screening rate in countries with populations of ≥5 million (head of state: P=0.045; head of government: P=0.025). In the non-parametric analysis, male- and female-led countries with populations of ≥5 million differed significantly in the case fatality (head of state: P=0.014; health minister: P=0.023) and recovery rates (head of state: P=0.045; head of government: P=0.011).
Conclusion: Generally, there appears to be no significant difference between male and female political authorities in terms of most COVID-19 pandemic management indices. Nonetheless, male-led countries possessed better patient recovery rates, while female-led countries had more COVID-19 screening tests.
Highlights
Alireza Mirahmadizadeh (Google Scholar)
Roya Sahebi (Google Scholar)
Keywords
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