• Governance and gender
• Assessing gender

Governance and gender

This study, using several independent data sets, investigates the relationship between gender and
corruption. It presents evidence that:

• in hypothetical situations women are less likely to condone corruption
• women managers are less involved in bribery, and
• countries which have greater representation of women in government or in market work have lower levels of corruption.

This evidence, taken together, provides some support for the idea that, at least in the short or medium term, increased presence of women in public life will reduce levels of corruption.

The authors first present data from the World Values Survey, in which men and women in a large number of developed and developing countries were asked a series of questions regarding their attitudes in hypothetical situations in which there was room for dishonest or opportunistic behavior. The evidences show that men were more likely to choose options that are equivalent to the “defect” option in a prisoners’ dilemma game. After showing gender differences in a range of attitudes, the authors present more detailed multivariate evidence on gender differentials in the attitude to bribery.

The authors then present evidence of behavior in actual as opposed to hypothetical situations. Using a survey of enterprise owners and managers in Georgia (formerly part of the Soviet Union) they show that officials in firms owned or managed by men are significantly more likely to be involved in bribe-giving.

One concern in these analyses is that corruption is self-reported. Because of this, it is conceivable that the results reflect gender differentials in acknowledgment of corruption, rather than in incidence of corruption.

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