Ema Talam, Liva Požlep & Katherin Adriana Camargo Cetina

What makes individual less corrupt? Are individuals less corrupt because of some innate characteristics such as gender, position that person is occupying/extent of power that a person has within the society or the society itself? Or is the position person is holding directly influenced by innate characteristics and the society, and it becomes ‘chicken and the egg’ problem?

Many scientists tested the hypothesis of women being ‘fairer sex’ – hypothesis that they are less likely to engage into corrupt practices simply just by being women. One of the studies supporting this hypothesis that women are less likely to engage in corrupt behaviour was conducted by Swamy, Azfar, Knack and Lee (1999). Testing the hypothetical situation of whether women are more likely to engage into corruption, Swamy et al. used the data from World Values Surveys which were conducted in 1980s and the very beginning of 1990s and concluded that there is significantly larger percentage of women than men believing that corrupt practices cannot be justified (about 20% in favour of women). Second part of their evidence, coming from the enterprise survey conducted in 350 companies in Georgia, showed that women are less likely to engage in bribery. Finally, looking at cross country data about female representation and level of corruption in the country, Swamy et al. concluded that female labour force participation and representativeness in the parliament tends to have significant negative correlation with level of corruption.

Study by Dollar, Fisman and Gatti (2001) based its hypothesis on rooted belief that women take more into account benefit of the whole society rather than their own personal benefit alone. They also came to the conclusion that greater female representativeness in the government is associated with lower level of corruption. Celinda Lake, U.S. Democratic party pollster, offered potential explanation for this finding in one of the her interviews for The New York Times. Mrs. Lake believes that public tends to be less tolerant of women engaging into corruption and stated: “When voters find out men have ethics and honesty issues, they say, ‘Well, I expected that.’ When they find out it’s a woman, they say, ‘I thought she was better than that.’” (Keating, 2013)

Looking at the situation currently in the European Union member states, this thesis may also be proven. The countries on the graph below are listed based upon their levels of corruption (Denmark being the least corrupt and Romania the most) and percentages of seats in the parliament taken by men and women, respectively. To state whether a country has a high proportion of female representatives, European average was computed and we have decided to take any number higher or equal to 28 percent (27.61% being the average value) as an indicator of high female representativeness.

By looking at results from the graph, it can be seen that out of 31 presented countries, 14 of them exceed the average of 28% females in the government. The first ten listed countries have the highest share of female government representatives and are also among the least corrupt countries in the world. Among the most corrupt countries in Europe, it can be seen that lower levels of females in national governments. According to data presented, it can be concluded that higher share of women in parliaments leads to lower levels of corruption, measured by CPI.

One important point has to be made, though. Region of EU and Western Europe in general is one of the least corrupt regions in the world (some other influences to the lower level of corruption might also be significant), meaning a great part of countries presented on the graph are positioned among low level corruption countries on the world by CPI measure. Transparency International measured perceived corruption levels in 175 countries in 2014, and the lowest ranked country presented (Romania with rank of 69) is still among the first half out of 175 world countries. As an interesting reference to European based scores, we can look at the U.S. or the second least corrupt country in the world, according to CPI: New Zealand. United States of America is listed 17th out of 175 countries in total on 2014 CPI index. Proportion of seats held by women in the national parliament in 2014 was only 19 percent indicating that even though they rank high on the Corruption Perception Index the share of female government officials does not link to it. However, the number of women representatives in the parliament of the United States is rising yearly. In New Zealand, the share of seats in the parliament taken by women is 30%. In Singapore (7th on CPI) and Canada (10th), the shares are 25% in both, proving our thesis that more women in government result in lower corruption levels[1].  

This issue can also be observed from the perspective of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, one of them being masculinity or femininity. According to Hofstede, the masculinity side represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness and material rewards for success. Society at large is more competitive. Its opposite, femininity, stands for a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak and quality of life. Society at large is more consensus-oriented (The Hofstede Centre). Examples of masculine societies include Japan as the most masculine society, followed by: United States, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Austria, United Kingdom and so on. Most notable among feminine societies are: Sweden, The Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Portugal (Clearly Cultural). Hofstede’s definition of culture can be further supplemented with findings that in a masculine culture, corruption levels will be higher because men are more competitive. (Niederle, Vesterlund, 2007).

Although the set of evidences might suggest that women are less corrupt than men and that including more women in the position of authority might be a good idea to combat corruption (such practices were done in Peru or Mexico by putting more women into the position of traffic officers), we should not instantly jump to the conclusion. The phenomenon presented is not universal; it might be a deeply culturally, socially and country specific. Esarey and Schwindt argue that less corrupt women are not a universal fact. They say that the link between women and reduced corruption is the strongest in democracies with high electoral accountability. The latter is defined as the ability of voters to identify corrupt officials and punish them by not voting for them. Following the stated, it can be said that in countries with high electoral accountability, engaging in corruption will be more risky, and therefore, less women will engage themselves in corrupt practices and vice versa. This can be connected to the risk factor to several social and behavioral studies proving that women are more risk averse than men (Charness, Gneezy, 2007).

The fact universally acknowledged is that men currently occupy more positions of authority, however, the growing role of gender equality might lead to further changes in this aspect. Some authors suggested that women are often not in positions to be undertaking corrupt acts in the first place and that women are just not acquainted with how to engage themselves in corrupt behaviour. Even though some evidence does suggest that women might appear to be less corrupt, judging upon someone’s tendency to be corrupt solely on gender could be detrimental as there are numerous determinants of someone’s tendency to be more or less corrupt.

[1] World’s average female representativeness was 22.2% in 2014 (World Bank Data)