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41 SAIS Rev. Int'l Aff. 49 (2021)
New Dimensions of Gender and Political Leadership during COVID-19: Linking Feminist Stewardship and Electoral Success in Queensland, Australia

handle is hein.journals/susrwoil41 and id is 50 raw text is: New Dimensions of Gender and Political Leadership During COVID-19: Linking Feminist Stewardship and Electoral Success in Queensland, Australia Susan Harris Rimmer, Elise Stephenson, Tom Verhelst Scholars such as Carol Johnson and Blair Williams have argued that COVID-19 has led to more favorable coverage of female political leaders than was previously the case. This is attributed to a traditional perception of the motherly role associated with the political response. They laud New Zealand as an exemplary feminist political response in this crisis. Yet Queensland, an Australian state, is also headed by a female politician, with an equivalent population of just over five million, just over 1,300 COVID-19 cases, and only seven deaths. Like Jacinda Ardern, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk won an election in October 2020, in what was perceived as a referendum on her government's approach to COVID-19 response and recovery. Instead of invoking maternal images, she instead exercised what we term feminist stewardship by transferring her legal power over to apolitical medical experts. She was seen to display feminine protectionism by closing internal borders and resisting pressure to re-open borders from male elites who labelled her heartless. Even so, her party's economic recovery package remained reso- lutely focused on traditional male-dominated areas of mining and construction. This paper extends our understanding of gender and political leadership during COVID-19 by drawing on extensive gender-disaggregated health, economic, and electoral data. Introduction Interest in crisis leadership has grown rapidly during COVID-19. Globally, gendered leadership styles have arisen in response to mass uncertainty and emerging health and economic priorities, from the rise of the strongman leader to feminist protector.1,2 Whilst Donald Trump and Boris Johnson provided ex- amples of more populist-style strongman leadership traits, Carol Johnson and Professor Susan Harris Rimmer is the Director of the Policy Innovation Hub at Griffith University in Brisbane Australia. Dr. Elise Stephenson is a Research Fellow in the Policy Innovation Hub. Dr. Tom Verhelst is the Program Director at Griffith University's Regional Innovation Data Lab at Griffith University. SAIS Review vol. 41 no. 1 (Winter-Spring 2021) © 2021 Johns Hopkins University4 49