Are women heads of government actually more likely to face corruption charges than their male counterparts because of a deep-seated belief that a woman’s mere presence corrupts public office? That’s what authors Madison Schramm, Alexandra Stark, and Loriana Crasic theorize in their new paper, “‘Back to the Kitchen’: Corruption Charges Against Women Heads of Government,” recently published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science.
As the authors put it, “While corruption is often described as fraudulent or illegal conduct in academic research, in political processes and in popular use, corruption signifies the erosion or debasing of an entity or body politic.”
That means corruption implies not only specific behaviors but also violations of norms.
“Rather than investigate the relative tendency of women to engage in abuses of office, or the double standards or inconsistent expectations and associated evaluations women face in political life, we focus on the link between gender, perceptions of corruption and long-standing narratives that make women heads of government more vulnerable to accusations,” they write.
And while benevolent sexism might actually help women when they’re running for office, good old fashioned sexism can be a setback once they arrive and face political setbacks and political reality. “In other words, women’s perceived incongruity with the highest office will not be a constant, but rather conditional, and articulated through and reified by allegations of corruption.”
“Out of Place”
The authors use cross-national data to show how formal corruption charges are “significantly more likely” to target women executives “than their male counterparts.”
The data set had 2,119 leader observations. Of 68 women leader observations, 14 cases were women who had faced or were facing corruption charges. By comparison, there were 2,051 male leader observations, but 37 cases of men charged with corruption. As the authors point out, “Even if there is an underlying gender bias in the corruption coding, it would have to be quite large to explain the findings described below.”
While benevolent sexism might actually help women when they’re running for office, good old fashioned sexism can be a setback once they arrive and face political setbacks and political reality.
They also look at specific cases — Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Turkish Prime Minister
Tansu Çiller — to show what a powerful role gendered discourse plays in motivating suspicion and driving public sentiment. In both cases, they found, gender “profoundly” influenced the charges, adding that “perceptions of women as out of place in, and potentially dangerous to, the office of head of government increased their vulnerability to the charges.”
The authors assert their findings are a substantial contribution to literature on gender, leadership, and politics of corruption, writing: “This research is critical to our understanding of politics in a world where more women are breaking the highest glass ceiling by becoming heads of government.” (One might add that it is also important in places where perceptions of women are part of the reason that they are not yet head of government or state).
They suggest that future research like analysis of the content of media coverage of women leaders can even further test and improve their explanations and understanding. They also encourage future researchers to look at different levels of government and across socio-cultural contexts.
Top photo: In August 2016, protesters in Brazil called for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff (Antonio Cruz/Agência Brasil/Wikimedia Commons)
