When you look at Iceland, Taiwan, Germany or New Zealand, you can see the way women are handling this crisis with efficiency. These countries have contained the pandemic through early, scientific intervention.

They have implemented widespread testing, easy access to quality medical treatment, aggressive contact tracing and tough restrictions on social gatherings. These leaders are giving us an effective alternative way of managing the crisis.

What Did These Women Do?

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen heard about a new virus infecting the citizens of Wuhan in December last year, she immediately ordered all planes arriving from Wuhan to be inspected. She then set up an epidemic command centre, ramped up production of personal protective equipment such as face masks and restricted all flights from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.

Taiwan's early, aggressive intervention measures have limited the outbreak to just 393 confirmed infections and six deaths.

Four of the five Nordic countries are led by women. Their countries each have lower death rates from coronavirus compared to the rest of Europe. Iceland, for example, intervened early, aggressively contact-tracing and quarantining suspected cases.

Compared to Sweden, whose leader Prime Minister Stefan Löfven refused to impose a lockdown, has kept schools and businesses open. There, the death rate is far higher than in most other European countries.

Do We Need More Women Leaders?

The epicentre of the pandemic right now is the United States, where President Trump initially accused the Democratic party of releasing the virus as a "hoax" and failed to act on multiple warnings from scientists.

Now there is an emergency of over 25,000 coronavirus deaths and a half-million cases, which continue to mount further every day.

Similarly, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson dismissed the severity of the crisis and refused to impose restrictions on social gatherings even after other European countries went on lockdown. Before he was hospitalized with COVID-19, he told reporters that the virus would not stop him from shaking hands with hospital patients.

It is very obviously time for us to recognize that the world is in need of more women leaders and equal representation of women at all levels of politics.