Revisiting the nexus between corruption and gender: does women's political participation in parliament matter?

The study aims to empirically verify the hypotheses that the increase in the share of women legislator in politics has the potential to reduce levels of corruption within the Parliament and overall political corruption levels. Using data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) platform, fixed effect...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International review of applied economics 2024-11, Vol.38 (6), p.687-705
Main Authors: de Barros Reis, Carla, Ribeiro, Rafael S. M., Cimini, Fernanda
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Corruption
Democracy
Equality
gender
GMM
Legislatures
panel
parliament
Political participation
Political power
Politics
Public sphere
Structural aspects
women
Women and politics
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Summary:The study aims to empirically verify the hypotheses that the increase in the share of women legislator in politics has the potential to reduce levels of corruption within the Parliament and overall political corruption levels. Using data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) platform, fixed effects, and generalised method of moments (GMM-System) models are estimated for a set of 154 countries between 1995 and 2018. The results show that when considering corruption within the legislative house, the greater share of women in politics is associated with lower levels of corruption. Even after controlling for various societal factors, the results confirm the positive effect of women's participation in parliament on the decline of corruption. Yet, this effect does not seem to spill over into other branches of government and sectors of the public sphere. When considering the level of more general corruption, it responds much more to variations in structural aspects, as democratic maturity and equality in the distribution of political power among different socioeconomic strata, than to women's participation in parliamentary seats.
ISSN:0269-2171
1465-3486
DOI:10.1080/02692171.2024.2382098