Is Women’s Leadership Really Associated with Fewer Covid-19 Deaths?

Abstract

Recent research regarding the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed to find a relationship between the sex of a state governor and COVID-19 deaths in that state. Specifically, this research has reported that states with female governors have lower instances of COVID-19 deaths and that executive orders given by female governors have been more effective at reducing COVID-19 deaths than those given by male governors. Such findings have the potential to influence our understanding of the causes behind phenomenon such as the glass cliff, which address the disproportionate emergence of females in precarious leadership positions, as compared to the emergence of females in less precarious positions. We argue, however, that the theoretical implications of such findings are bound by limitations of the analyses from which they are derived. In response to a call for more consistent use of replication in the Journal of Applied Psychology, we conduct a series of direct and conceptual replications of this prior work, finding little evidence that a governor’s sex serves as a reliable predictor of COVID-19 deaths. Consequently, unlike prior research, we argue that insight gleaned through data from the COVID-19 pandemic has not provided reason for us to alter our understanding as to the causal factors that contribute to the emergence of the glass cliff.