Gender, corruption perceptions, and political evaluations

How do women’s representation and corruption perceptions affect evaluations of democratic institutions? I begin by providing an overview of the literature on gender stereotypes and corruption perceptions. A consistent finding is that citizens believe women politicians to be less corrupt than men, owing largely to women’s perceived risk aversion and political outsider status. Nevertheless, these gender stereotypes can be a double-edged sword. When women are implicated in or accused of corruption, they are punished more than men involved in similar acts. The second half of the chapter is an analysis of survey data from 18 Latin American countries showing that although citizens dislike corruption everywhere, it has the most negative effect on evaluations of democratic institutions in countries where women’s numeric representation in the legislature has increased in recent years. These findings suggest that if women are initially perceived as “political cleaners,” citizens political evaluations decline if expectations about corruption go unmet.