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What the World Needs is More Young Women Leaders
The opinion of a 77-year-old white male
If any people have the right to gloat over the way they handled COVID 19 it is New Zealanders led by a youthful, female prime minister.
But the country’s PM didn’t gloat over the successful suppression of COVID 19 unless you call doing a happy dance, gloating.
New Zealanders just buckled down and went with the flow, in spite of many hardships. Kiwis are tough and resourceful and very proud and that might go a long way to explaining why New Zealand has become the first among the OECD group of nations, if not eradicating COVID-19, at least bringing it to its knees.
That doesn’t mean Ardern, or Jacinda as she is commonly referred to, wasn’t in a celebratory mood. She had a right to take pride over the fact there are now very few active cases, little to no community transmission, and no more reason for social distancing among the NZ population of five million. As Ardern explained in a FaceTime Live chat she did a little dance in front of her two-year-old daughter Neve, to celebrate.
She admitted: “I was doing a bit of a “semi-co-ordinated movement my child couldn’t understand.’’ Aside from her dancing moment, she spoke to the NZ citizenry in a measured, low-key tone from what seemed to be a back-office that looked more like a school staff room than a prime minister’s office. She displayed the same steadiness, the same measured tone in the COVID crisis that she used in the handling of the terrorist attack in Christchurch in which 51 people were murdered. Also, her approach in the White Island volcanic eruption where 5 tourists were killed bought world attention to this vibrant young country leader.
New Zealand’s first case of COVID was in February 2020. Facing dire forecasts that as many as 28,000 Kiwis dying from the pandemic, she put the country into lockdown on March 25, less than a month after the first warning. That decisive step by the PM…
