GLAMOUR: The Women Leading the Coronavirus Response From City Hall

MATTIE KAHN, GLAMOUR

When Lori Lightfoot was elected mayor in Chicago in April 2019 (becoming the first black woman to serve in the office), she had a sense of what was about to fall on her plate.

In that race, she’d run on promises to stamp out corruption, deal with an impending fiscal crisis, reduce crime, and reform policing. There were bound to be unexpected problems, but she had her marching orders. Then, six months into her tenure, a once-in-a-lifetime virus put her plans on hold. When she’d mapped out how her first term in office would look, a pandemic that would compel her to shut down one of the biggest cities in the United States for months on end was, as she puts it, “not on the list of possible options.” She has rejiggered her to-do list.

Since states explored (and then instituted) lockdowns several weeks ago, much attention had been paid to the warring approaches of their governors. Washington governor Jay Inslee moved fast to curtail an outbreak in Seattle, enacting a plan that has in all likelihood saved thousands of lives. Meanwhile, Governor Brian Kemp ruled that some nonessential businesses in Georgia could reopen in late April and lifted additional restrictions last week, ahead of the recommended timeline from public health experts. The decision has been so denounced that even President Donald Trump expressed disapproval.

But while it does fall to governors to make the call to close—and later, to reopen—their states, our nation’s cities and the people who lead them have decisions to make too. Municipal governments can make funds available to small businesses to keep them afloat or plan for meal distribution for at-risk children who can’t get them at school while in quarantine. Local officials can mandate mask wearing or clear streets to open up space for pedestrians or streamline access to essential services. In cities and towns across America, it’s mayors—even more than statewide politicians or the president—who are responsible for sounding a clear note to constituents who have perhaps received muddied signals from other leaders. And it’s mayors who have the closest look at the minute-to-minute, ever-compounding desperation that people in their communities now feel.

“I don’t think there’s a female way of leading, nor do I think that most women would say that,” says Juliette Kayyem, who leads a virtual convening with hundreds of global mayors each week that Bloomberg Philanthropies hosts. “But what many women have demonstrated in this crisis is both truthfulness, which is needed in a pandemic, in terms of being honest about what we know and what we don’t know, and quick decision making. Their cities have benefited from actions taken early and decisively, even if imperfect.”

(Not every mayor has quite met her moment. Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman recently offered up her residents as a “control group” to see how many people would die without social distancing.)

For women who lead towns and cities—as for women in all positions of leadership—the job is complicated. Be empathetic, but firm. Be decisive, but not cold. Be understanding, but don’t be a doormat. Be focused, but never be unavailable. Be omnipresent, be kind, be assertive, be “relatable.”

Over the past two weeks, Glamour interviewed five women who know the role’s tightrope walk well—Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, San Francisco mayor London Breed, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, Mayor Rosalynn Bliss in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway in Madison, Wisconsin. Here, these women look back on the first two months of this crisis—low moments; beacons of hope; unexpected, absurdly popular memes—and plan for an uncertain future.

Read the full article here.