Gender and Corruption: A Survey of the Experimental Evidence

I provide an overview of the literature that explores whether there are gender differences in corruption using economic decision-making experiments designed to simulate corrupt transactions usually involving acts of bribery between a firm and a government official. A primary focus of the chapter is to critically examine this evidence with a view to addressing the following question: will increased female participation in public life – both in government and bureaucracy – lead to reduced corruption? I find that across a wide variety of experiments, studying different aspects of corruption, it is either the case that women behave in a more pro-social and less corrupt manner than men or that there are no significant gender differences. There are no studies that find men to be less corrupt. Consequently, I conclude by arguing that we can answer the question posed above in the affirmative.