ABSTRACT
Introduction Countries where women occupy senior positions in parliaments, governments, and businesses are generally considered less corrupt. Is it, therefore, reasonable to conclude that women are the fairer sex? The foundations of research on women and corruption were laid by Swamy et al. (2001) and Dollar et al. (2001), both of whom posited that women are less likely to be corrupt than men. Since then, evidence has been presented on both sides and support for the notion that women are a more powerful anti-corruption force has been ambiguous (Sung 2003; Alatas et al. 2009; Torgler and Valev 2010). Women are less likely to pay bribes but they are also less likely to be asked for bribes and somewhat less likely to refuse to pay. They are also less likely to report corruption. Even if in terms of the payment of bribes, women appear to be the fairer sex, they are not the fairer sex when it comes to refusing to pay or to report corruption. I suggest that women have a wide range of behaviour regarding corruption. Given favourable internal and external structures, they may be less pre-disposed to corruption than men. However, if political and social structures are unsupportive and repressive of women, then they are less likely to take a stand because they tend to be risk-averse, critical of themselves and unable to stand against corruption if the safest option is to comply. Using multilevel models and Global Corruption Barometer data, I nd that women are not always the fairer sex. Women have a greater range of attitudes and behaviour than men; extortion and resistance to bribes trigger dierent responses from men and women depending on the context. Women are aected by internal propensities to resist bribes but they are also less likely to be asked. External structures may exert a greater inuence on them than men to comply with bribes or to resist bribes. I test four dependent variables: paying bribes, refusing to pay bribes, being asked for a bribe, and reporting bribery using cross-national data focusing on a subsample of Asian countries.
