No. 4 Are Women Really
the "Fairer" Sex? Corruption and Women in Government
By David Dollar, Raymond Fisman,
and Roberta Gatti
|
No. 4 Are Women Really
the "Fairer" Sex? Corruption and Women in Government |
Numerous behavioral studies have found women to be more trust-worthy and public-spirited than men. These results suggest that women should be particularly effective in promoting honest government. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that the greater the representation of women in parliament, the lower the level of corruption. We find this association in a large cross-section of countries; the result is robust to a wide range of specifications.
This paper is part of
a series of papers on selected topics commissioned for the forthcoming Policy
Research Report on Gender and Development. The PRR is being carried out
by Elizabeth King and Andrew Mason and co-sponsored by the World Bank’s Development
Economics Research Group and the Gender and Development Group of the Poverty
Reduction and Economic Management Network. Printed copies of this paper are
available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433.
Please contact Tai Lui Tan, in room MC3-624A or at Gnetwork@worldbank.org.
Comments are welcome and should be sent directly to the author(s) at ddollar@worldbank.org,
rf250@columbia.edu and rgatti@worldbank.org.
The full-length
paper is available in PDF format.