Gender And Corruption Tolerance

Are women less corrupt than men? Some scholars are in favor of women being the "cleaner and fairer gender" whose corruption tolerance are lower than men’s, and improving the members of women in the public sector can be as a potential anti-corruption remedy, while others believe that women are not necessarily more intrinsically honest or averse to corruption than men and the attitudes of women concerning corruption depend on certain contexts. If women are able to acquire the same opportunities and network of engaging in corruption as men or stay in atmosphere with widespread corruption, they will be as corrupt as men. At present, there is no empirical research exploring the corruption tolerance of Chinese officials and whether there is a gender gap based on Chinese context. In this study, we explore whether there is gender gap in the corruption tolerance of public officials in the Chinese institutional and cultural contexts. We conducted an empirical investigation of 853 Chinese public officials and determined:1) female public officials’overall level of tolerance to government’s corruption is lower than those of male’s; 2) the gender gap in tolerance of petty corrupt behaviors and systemic corruption which the opportunities and networks of engage in are abundant is declining but women’s tolerance of them is still lower than men’s; 3) public official’s degree of participation in anti-corruption action is low and no significant gender difference is found as a result of the defects of supervision system; 4) Value factors plays an important intermediary role in the relationship between gender and tolerance of government corruption. Women are generally more apt to avoid uncertainty than men, and the higher the degree of uncertainty avoidance, the lower the tolerance of government corruption. Women’s identity to the concept of patriarchal collectivism is lower than men’s, and the higher the acceptance to the concept of patriarchal collectivism would lead to the higher the tolerance of government corruption. Women’s score on "Masculinity" is higher than men’s, and the stronger the "Masculinity" could result in the higher the tolerance of government corruption. These intermediary factors lead to the tolerance of government corruption of women lower than men. Furthermore, the option which achieves the biggest tolerance difference between men and women is "promiscuous public officials and keeping mistresses". This research is of great significance to the domestic research on corruption and to the exploration in anti-corruption strategies.