Icelanders were unique in their gendered perception of their 2008 economic crisis. After causing their con-men government to collapse, voters chose Iceland’s first women prime minister and supported her gender-balanced government, including former members of the world’s most successful feminist political party. The so-called Locomotive group had justified its embrace of high-risk financial activities, its unwavering political support for Icelandic tycoons, its members’ astronomical profits, and its lack of transparency by calling about mythical masculine ideas (Einarsdóttir and Margrét 2010). This Icelandic case illuminates how much corruption--even in Western democracies--is central to male dominance. Feminist comparativists tend to assume explicit political systems as the primary center of politics--focusing on “state feminism” and women’s movement challenges--but in most societies today, much of what happens is directed by “a shadow elite,” flexible networks of politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen looking out for themselves (Wedel 2009). Those who study of corruption tend to ignore the obvious gendered implications: most in the elite are men, and corruption is one more way to keep women out of power even as they enter into formal politics. Building upon insights from postcommunist Europe about corruption and a broad range of feminist political science, this paper examines the politics behind Iceland’s economic collapse and the new government’s attempts at recovery as a first step in theorizing the role of modern-day corruption in gender and class stratification. A scholar of gender, policy, and postcommunism, I conducted fieldwork in Iceland in the summer and fall of 2010.
