Abstract:  Do men and women perceive corruption differently? While evidence suggest that there is a strong link between gender and corruption, and that gender differences can at least partly be derived from men and women having different attitudes towards corruption, most studies to date focus on gender differences in perceptions of the scale or severity of the corruption in general, rather than its different forms. However, we argue that factors such as role socialization, social status and life experiences may make men and women perceive different kinds of corruption. Drawing on the distinction between ‘need’ and ‘greed’ corruption, we suggest that women are more likely than men to perceive that corruption is driven by need rather than greed. In particular, women may be more likely to be exposed to need corruption because of their greater care taking responsibilities both in the professional and private sphere, and, much in line with marginalization theory, have easier access to forms of corruption that are less dependent upon embeddedness in collusive networks. Using unique survey data, we show that women and men indeed differ in their perceptions of need vs. greed, and that women perceive more need corruption, while men perceive more greed corruption. This suggests that perceptions of different forms of corruption are indeed gendered and we discuss the implication of this for anti-corruption policy.

Keywords:  corruption; gender; greed; need; socialization

Published:   28 May 2020

Issue:   Vol 8, No 2 (2020): Fighting Corruption in the Developed World: Dimensions, Patterns, Remedies