Gender, Crisis, and Perceptions of Leadership: Angela Merkel and Jacinda Ardern

• In Event: Gender Dynamics in National Political Leadership: Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

In this paper, we illustrate how crises provide opportunities for women to exhibit their leadership capacity. We argue that these opportunities, however, are conditional on creating gender role congruency. To demonstrate our argument, we employ a qualitative comparative case study between former German Chancellor Merkel and former New Zealand Prime Minister Ardern across three distinctly gendered domains: COVID-19 (feminine domain), terrorist attacks (masculine domain), and natural disasters (gender neutral domain). We conduct a qualitative content analysis of each leader’s public remarks and parliamentary speeches as well as news editorials commenting on their crisis management to determine whether and when Merkel and Ardern were able to create gender role congruency across their leadership style and rhetoric in each respective crisis issue. Next, we ask whether this gender role (in)congruency impacted their approval ratings. We find that when crises produce gender role congruency for women leaders, their leadership is evaluated positively, enhancing their hold on political power. In contrast, when crises created gender role incongruity for Merkel and Ardern, approval ratings suffered, exacerbating backlash, and reinforcing the masculinization of executive office.

Authors

• Farida Jalalzai, Virginia Tech

• Malliga Och, Denison University

• Louise K. Davidson-Schmich, University of Miami