In the past 15 years, academics
studying corruption have examined the relationship between women in government
and corruption. In the early 2000s several
studies found a strong correlation between the levels of women in government
and the levels of reported and perceived corruption (Swamy et al, 2001; Dollar,
Fisman, Gatti 2001). They claimed to show
that women are less involved in bribery, and are less likely to condone bribery. Their data seems to show that corruption is
less severe where women hold a larger share of parliamentary seats and senior
positions in the government bureaucracy.
In response to the research of Swamy
et al and Dollar et al, later studies argue that the relationship observed was
spurious and that the causation actually flowed in the opposite way. (Sung, 2003).
Sung in his article critiques the argument of Swamy and colleagues,
arguing that the study suffers from a basic flaw of correlation being confused
as causation. Sung argues and attempts
to show that the incidence of corruption is decreased not by women in the
legislature but the fairer system itself.
Similarly Goetz argues that women in less developed countries simply
have fewer opportunities to engage in corruption as most of such countries have
strong closed networks of men where most of the corruption occurs (Goetz 2007).
Ideologies
The relationship between gender and
corruption seems to have become murkier as more studies have been done with
different outcomes. Part of the reason
different outcomes have been observed is the different ideologies that have
guided parameters of studies. Indeed “corruption
and corruption perception can be considered as cultural phenomena because they
depend on how a society understands the rules and what constitutes a deviation. Indeed, it does not depend only on societies
but also on personal values and moral vies” (Melgar, Rossi, Smith 2010). Gender roles and expectations of behavior are
also heavily influenced by culture and individual opinions and choices.
Gender Bias
The differences in historical gender
roles have led to biases in the way women are perceived in government and the
public sphere. This distinction has been
measured and documented principally in voting practices. Gender has been shown to influence elections
in low-information voters (McDermott 1997), presidential elections (Smith,
Paul, Paul 2007) and legislative elections post 9-11 (Lawless 2004).
Perception of
Corruption
Treisman writes that “controlling for
income, most factors that predict perceived corruption do not correlate with
recently available measures of actual corruption experiences (based on surveys
of business people and citizens that ask whether they have been expected to pay
bribes recently)” (Treisman 2007). This
shows that the subjective measures such as perception of corruption are not
necessarily as accurate as some groups may claim. They are clouded by many
different factors. One of the factors that muddies the water is the
relationship partisanship has on perception and tolerance of corruption. A
survey experiment was carried out in Spain where there have been numerous
corruption scandals recently. The results show that the same crime is viewed
differently depending on whether the responsible actor is a member of the
respondent’s party or in the opposition (Anduiza, Gallego, Muñoz 2013).
Results
The
survey I created to test my hypothesis was an electronic survey with two
scenarios of an ambiguous situation that could be construed as corruption. The first question read as follows: “City
Councilman Tom Johnson is head of the public lands subcommittee. Two months ago a proposal for a new library
was passed in the city council. As the
head of the subcommittee he selected the site of the new library. The site he selected is owned by a member of
his constituency who he expects to donate to his campaign this year. Did corruption occur here?” The second
question is almost identical, except for the fact that the politician is a
fictional “Congresswoman Claire Woods.”
The survey that I distributed over 7
days had a total number of 87 respondents.
This smaller number presents the first limitation to my study. In order to have an adequate margin of error,
with 95% certainty, the sample size would have to be significantly larger than
the sample I was able to draw. Nevertheless,
this sample is large enough to notice trends, despite its small size. It does
not however allow for highly accurate conclusions to be drawn about a large
population such as the US.
The second limitation is the relative
homogeneity of the sample. For example
the respondents to the survey were 75% women and almost 90% were Caucasian. Similarly over 60% self-identified as
Republican in political orientation. This
is probably the biggest obstacle to my survey, as the emerging trends could
possibly be heavily affected by biases of different racial and social groups. I hypothesized that respondents to the survey
would be more tolerant of a woman in a morally ambiguous situation than a man.
My hypothesis was disproven in the
results of the survey, as the response rates indicating corruption in the two
scenarios did not vary to a degree large enough to be statistically
significant. The perception of corruption is a more complicated relationship
than a binary variable of male or female. Perceptions and biases are a cocktail
of nature and nurture. Our different cultures and life experiences influence
the way we perceive everything, including corruption. In the case of women and
government, Beaman et al (2008) concluded that perceptions of women can be
changed by exposure to women in government in places like India. This is just
one example that shows the fluid nature of our conscious perceptions and
biases. Due to the complex nature of perception, attempting to isolate the
gender factor among others is extremely difficult.
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