Who to Bribe. Voters’ Perception of Female Politicians’ Integrity

Recent research has shown that gendered stereotypes depicting women as more ethical than men and assuming that they will act as ‘political cleaners’ in public office may facilitate women’s political advancement in corruption environments, with gender itself then becoming a symbol. This paper examines the extent to which such stereotypes are held by the electorate when evaluating female and male politicians’ likely behaviour when offered a bribe while in office. We expect that the symbolic association of women with honesty will drive people’s assessment of female politicians as less corruptible. We test this expectation using a conjoint analysis embedded in an original nationally-representative survey in Spain, where growing concerns about corruption make the research question particularly relevant. In our experimental design respondents were asked to identify the more corruptible politician between two hypothetical local councillors from their town by imagining an investor who is willing to offer a bribe to advance her business. By randomly modifying several of the local councillors’ attributes, our results indicate that female politicians ‘stand for’ integrity, regardless of respondents’ gender and ideological self-placement. The symbolic effect is so strong that it even trumps prior explicit respondents’ positions on whether male or female politicians are more corrupt. The evocative function of gender as a symbol of integrity is also observed in the effect of other politicians’ traits, such as their professional background and the sort of social linkage (close ties to either local entrepreneurs or to NGOs) they have.