Friday, September 18, 2009

Gender, Corruption and Development

I'm not sure that I like the policy suggestions that could come from this study, but it's interesting nonetheless:

Numerous studies have found negative connection between corruption level and economic development. At the same time few of them demonstrate correlation between women representation in politics and corruption level. This paper analyzes correlation between gender and corruption for a specific sample of countries, sharing common cultural and historical legacy – transition countries. Relationship between higher number of women in parliament and decreasing level of corruption is supported by data. Relations with other forms of women social activity were found to be insignificant. Contribution of this paper to the research literature on this topic is twofold. First analysis on gender and corruption in transition economies has previously not been done. Second, this study could also be used for the practical policies on fighting corruption by application of gender quotas.


1 comment:

Josh said...

Why is it so common for researcher who find a strong correlation to jump to silly policy prescriptions like "application of gender quotas" as if women, in and of themselves, cause a decline in corruption?

You see this all the time in sociology and I just don't get it.