Corruption has a gender: Why paying attention to gender norms is good for anti-corruption

By Diana Chigas, Co-Director, CJL

In 2023, history was made at the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC): for the first time, the member states formally recognized that corruption is gendered and that gender considerations need to be part of anti-corruption efforts. As the culmination of years of work to understand and address the gender-corruption nexus, this was an important milestone. But it also highlighted a piece of the puzzle that is largely missing from the discussion: gender norms. A subset of social norms, these unwritten rules about how men and women should behave underlie the gender differences in participation, impact, and reporting in relation to corruption that many have documented. And yet they remain on the sidelines of policy and research — even as social norms more broadly are recognized as drivers of corrupt behavior.  

We at Besa Global, together with a number of peer organizations, researchers, and practitioners, believe that this needs to change.  

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A few simple questions help to frame the conversation: What role do gender norms play in corruption? How do we find this out? And what should we do differently if we are to take gender norms seriously? 

These were the focus of the recent Besa Global webinar, ‘Corruption has a gender: Who pays, who benefits, and who resists.’ For the webinar, we convened several of the leading global experts working at the intersection of corruption, gender, and social norms. Below are the highlights of their contributions—and how they challenge us to change how we think about anti-corruption –– both in theory and in practice. There are also links to each speaker’s full presentation. 

"A few simple questions help to frame the conversation: What role do gender norms play in corruption? How do we find this out? And what should we do differently if we are to take gender norms seriously?"

But first, a resounding takeaway

After listening to my colleagues’ thought-provoking presentations and the engaging group discussions that followed, I walked away with one overriding conclusion: addressing gender norms and their interaction with the social norms that drive corruption isn’t only about equity — it is good anti-corruption strategy. As our speakers collectively showed, gender norms shape who is targeted by corruption, who participates in it, and who can resist or report it.  

What do we mean by social and gender norms?  

Social norms are mutual expectations held within a group about the appropriate and typical way to behave in a particular situation — the ‘unwritten’ rules that are usually enforced through social rewards or punishments. Gender norms are a subset of social norms defining acceptable and appropriate behaviors for women and men. They differ from many social norms in that they are a key factor in shaping and normalizing gendered power inequalities.

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What role do gender norms play in corruption? 

1. Gender norms are at the heart of women’s vulnerability to corruption and reluctance to hold public officials accountable 

Caryn Peiffer, Associate Professor at the University of Bristol, showed how norms fuel women’s vulnerability to corruption, including sextortion. Her study in four Asia-Pacific countries found that women were more often targeted for ‘grassroots corruption’ — the everyday type of corruption that ordinary people experience. This kind of corruption is driven by norms that: 

• objectify women while expecting sexual modesty, making it more likely for women to be asked for sexual benefits instead of bribes, and where the perpetrators will get away with it with no formal or social sanction; 

• expect women to be passive, resulting in reduced levels of reporting or resistance; 

• place the caregiving role on women, increasing pressure to comply with corrupt requests when accessing services due from the state, in order to fulfill expectations of what constitutes a ‘good’ mother, wife, or daughter. 

Changing these norms is hard. Other research by Caryn has found that anti-corruption messaging alone — a common component of anti-corruption programs — has limited impact. Instead, efforts that go towards strengthening women’s agency and equality may indirectly reduce corruption as these norms start to shift.  

2. Gender norms shape how men and women engage in corruption differently

Research in Nigeria on informal payments in primary healthcare by the Policy Innovation Centre (PIC) in Nigeria and Besa Global echoes Caryn’s findings. Beyond this, Isaac Oritogun, Senior Research Advisor at the PIC, showed that while social norms push all public healthcare workers to solicit illicit payments, gender norms change how this pressure influences their behavior and plays out in the way they engage in corrupt activities (or not): 

• Men experience stacked burdens — with gender norm-based expectations that good men are ‘providers’, thus intensifying pressure on them to take bribes. 

• Women are in a double bind, facing contradictory norms that expect them to be both moral and caring, and financially responsible. In other words, they risk sanction whether they comply or refuse. This leads them to be more circumspect when they solicit payments and to feel the need to justify them more. 

To be effective, anti-corruption efforts must engage these different normative pressures. 

3. So what? These valuable findings lead us to the hugely important question: How do we address gender norms in anti-corruption work? 

Based on evidence of what works and does not, speakers shared action strategies, converging around three overarching themes: 

1. Unpack gender norms early. 

We discovered in our research in Nigeria with PIC and in Madagascar with Transparency International that standard social norms identification methodologies (like vignettes) can be adapted fairly easily to incorporate an exploration of gender norms. As I noted in my presentation, and as we describe in our ‘lessons learned’ brief, the hard part is unpacking the norms and identifying the intersections with other normative and non-normative factors driving a corrupt behavior. It is important to understand the reasons for gender differences — where, how and what gender norms matter, how they affect men’s and women’s motivations for engaging in corrupt acts, and how they interact with other norms. 

2. Build ‘layered’ strategies. 

As Paul Bukuluki, Professor at Makerere University, Uganda, underlined, turning an understanding of the social and gender norms driving a corrupt behavior into an effective social norms change strategy also requires challenging three common assumptions about how change happens: 

• that communicating knowledge will be enough to lead people to change; 

• that shifting people’s attitudes will lead them to change their behavior; 

• that enacting laws and policies will change norms and behavior. 

None of these approaches is enough. Social norms change happens when enough people see that enough other people are changing. In complex social contexts, a layered approach is needed. This involves pursuing multiple strategies simultaneously — for example, adding social norms change to programming focused on non-normative factors, and, in turn, addressing gender norms on top of that. Layering gender norms strategies involves recognizing the many different ways in which they exert social pressure to engage in corruption, and either adapting existing social norms strategies to account for these or working on changing gender norms directly.  

3. Take a gender-transformative approach — engage power. 

This means paying attention to norms and power structures in anti-corruption systems and how they reproduce the broader hierarchies, exclusions, and gendered power dynamics that exist in the broader society: for example, addressing masculinity norms that normalize sexual coercion or expect men to make money wherever they can, or shifting gender norms that socially punish women who challenge corrupt practices and dismiss or punish those who report them. Discussing the implications for action, Ortrun Merkle, Researcher at UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University, reminded us that changing norms and reducing corruption are fundamentally about shifting power. She shared an evidence-based multi-layered anti-corruption strategy for transforming gender norms. Such a strategy tackles not only awareness and behaviors, but it also addresses the formal and unwritten (normative) institutional and social rules and power structures that make corruption possible and make resistance difficult for women and other less powerful groups. This involves shifting norms that empower men and constrain women in corrupt transactions, transforming structures and processes that close off alternatives to acceding to corrupt demands, and challenging unwritten rules that sustain impunity. 

Where does this leave us? 

It is clear that if anti-corruption efforts ignore gender norms, they risk missing what animates so much corrupt behavior and what prevents people from resisting it. We now have better evidence, frameworks, and tools to understand and treat gender norms as core corruption drivers — not just as an obligatory add-on.  

But there is still much to learn about how to apply a gender norms lens, along with the dilemmas that come with it; in Nigeria, for example, women’s entry into higher-status jobs may increase equality while simultaneously exposing them to new pressures to participate in corruption.  

At a time when some, like the United States government, are retreating from engagement with gender, it is important to sustain this conversation and move toward a deeper, more nuanced engagement with it. So, we invite you to share your reflections, your evidence, and your questions. What resonates? What does not? Where do you see entry points for change? Watch the speaker clips and join the conversation to keep this important dialogue moving. 

This blog is made possible with support from the MacArthur Foundation.

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Diana Chigas is a Co-Director at The Corruption, Justice and Legitimacy Program. She is the Senior International Officer and Associate Provost at Tufts University and a Professor of the Practice of International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She has worked with governmental and non-governmental organizations on systemic conflict analysis, strategic planning, reflection and evaluation to improve the impact of peace programming.

Diana has over 25 years of experience as a facilitator and consultant in negotiation and conflict resolution, as well as an advisor and evaluator of social change programming in conflict-affected countries, including in the Balkans, East Africa, South Africa, El Salvador, and Cyprus, as well as with organizations such as the OSCE and the United Nations. Diana has received her JD from Harvard Law School and MALD from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.