Gender, cabinet ministers, and corruption

Literature shows that women are perceived to be less corrupt than men. Government and party leaders thus may bring more women into government or nominate more women as candidates for their party when they have a need to clean up a corrupt image, or repair the damage from a corruption scandal. Yet the relationship between corruption and representation of women in government has primarily been studied regarding legislatures. Cabinet posts are highly desired by politicians, and very limited in number, which means that appointing women to the cabinet to send an anti-corruption signal is more costly than increasing the number of seats held by women in the legislature. We use data from Latin America to present a preliminary test of whether presidents appoint more women to their cabinet when public opinion surveys indicate that the public perceives corruption as an increasingly important problem in the country. Findings indicate that presidents respond to corruption concerns by increasing women’s representation in their cabinet, but only when the president also faces declining popularity.