Connecting gender & corruption
Happy International Women’s Day! It’s time to talk corruption.
The Kinethics team, as you probably could guess, is a proud female team. So we’re naturally interested in the effect corruption has on women around the world — how we’re hurt by it, how we contribute to it, and how we can fight it.
Women’s role in worldwide corruption, on a surface level, seems straightforward: women are less likely to be corrupt, but more likely to be negatively affected by corruption. But this is a simplistic view of 50 percent of the world’s population. I thought we should ask some more questions.
Some studies have shown this may be at least partially true. Countries with a higher share of women in the labor force, and in government, have a lower corruption perception index. Firms with female management or owners are also less likely to offer bribes or condone corruption.
But before we suggest a women’s revolution, we should dig into those assumptions. A 2013 Rice University study showed that in countries where corruption is stigmatized, women are less likely to engage in corruption and bribe-taking. But in countries where corruption is a “ordinary part of governance,” that gender gap goes away. This may be because women politicians are punished more harshly for unethical behavior.
There’s a whole bunch of other great commentary on gender, politics and corruption. In short, the answer is complicated.
Depends on what you mean. Corruption eats into into public funds — including the public spending on health and social programs that disproportionately benefits (or hurts) women and children. Women are also less likely to be connected to corrupt networks or have unfettered access to the important people they need to bribe to get things done.
And of course, sexual violence and harassment often intersects with corruption. Transparency International recently wrote about sexual corruption, or “sextortion” around the world — from universities in Jordan, workplaces in Rwanda and refugee cross points in the Middle East and Europe. It’s a type of corruption that often goes unreported, and can have profound economic, psychological and social costs for women.
As I wrote about before, solving corruption requires coordination of non-profits, governments, businesses and citizens dedicated to making a change. But as a compliance-training company, we’re interested in applying big corruption lessons to our training. Here are some things to mull over this International Women’s Day:
- Male and female employees may have different experiences and different corruption risk factors. Ignoring those differences in compliance training can make your training less effective and realistic.
- Sexual harassment and corruption can be linked. Empowering employees to report both and having systems in place to address violations is crucially important.
Of course, these are only a couple ways to think about the intersection of gender, compliance and corruption. Send us your thoughts — I’d love to keep the conversation going!
