Unpacking the link between gender and injunctive norms on corruption using survey data: a multilevel analysis of 30 European countries

Several studies indicate that societies with higher engagement of women in the public sphere also display lower levels of corruption, suggesting that women play a key role in the fight toward corruption. However, less is known on how individual-level corruption varies between women and men across different institutional contexts, and whether and how certain individual norms affect this relationship. Using the most recent wave of the European Values Study (2017), this chapter applies multilevel models to test whether cultural, political, and institutional factors influence the link between gender and corruption. We argue that women do not naturally reject corruption, but that they are affected by persisting micro-level inequalities in terms of socio-economic background, gender roles, and political and social engagement. Furthermore, we investigate whether the gender gap in attitudes toward corruption is smaller in countries that are a) less corrupt; b) more gender-egalitarian and c) more economically equal.