Women and Corruption: What Positions Must They Hold to Make a Difference?

Abstract

This paper examines the precise role: whether it is the bribe-taking role, the decision-making or policy making role, in which women's presence can have an impact on corruption. It is the first paper in the gender and corruption literature to use an IV approach for addressing endogeneity concerns. We provide robust evidence that women's presence in parliament has a causal and negative impact on corruption, while other measures of female participation in economic activities are shown to have no effect. We draw inferences based on Moreira's (2003) conditional likelihood ratio approach. We also briefly examine the potential channels through which women as parliamentarians can affect corruption, and whether women are likely to become as corrupt as men as they gain similarity in social status.

Exclusion or interests? Why females in elected office reduce petty and grand corruption

“…First, studies investigating the influence of gender on corruption typically do not distinguish between different forms of corruption but tend to use aggregate measures capturing overall levels of corruption, which, we suggest, limits opportunities for theory building. Most scholars in the area focus either on corruption as an obstacle to the advancement of women (Bjarnegård 2013;Goetz 2007;Stockemer 2011;Sundström & Wängnerud 2016) or the inclusion of women as a factor decreasing the level of corruption (Alexander & Ravlik 2015;Dollar et al 2001;Jha & Sarangi 2015;Swamy et al 2001). We contribute to this field of research by arguing that a greater representation of women causes decreased corruption, and that greater corruption is an obstacle to the political advancement of women.…”

“…Most scholars in the area focus either on corruption as an obstacle to the advancement of women (Bjarnegård ; Goetz ; Stockemer ; Sundström & Wängnerud ) or the inclusion of women as a factor decreasing the level of corruption (Alexander & Ravlik ; Dollar et al. ; Jha & Sarangi ; Swamy et al. ).…”

Corruption and Technological Innovation in Private Small-Medium Scale Companies: Does Female Top Management Play a Role?

“…According to Jha and Sarangi [4], women have an influence on corruption and gender may directly or indirectly reflect the personality characteristics and ways of doing things. Along with the deepening of research, theories related to human capital, resource dependence, social psychology and principal-agent as shown in Table 1 have found an increasingly wide utilization in the field that female executives may have a great effect on innovation.…”

“…For the effect of women as top managers on corruption, we draw lessons from Jha and Sarangi [4] and Breen et al [35] and select some variables such as foreign ownership, exporter situation and sales as the control variables. In Table 7, the correlation between female top management and corruption appears to be robust at the 1% or 5% level of significance and we find that female top management also exerts a negative influence on the firm's corrupt acts from column 2 to column 3.…”

“…This is one of the most popular perspectives in transitional economies. The upper-echelon theory shows that women possibly behave differently from men in many economic circumstances [4] and corruption may not affect a firm's performance because paying bribes is simply an entry cost of firms to facilitate their survival in their environment. It places pressure on other firms to follow their behaviors when neighboring firms pay informal costs.…”