Who should be blamed in the eyes of society for acts of sexual corruption? This gendered form of corruption entails the abuse of power for sexual gain. This is sexual violence and corruption combined. However, the phenomenon has until recently not been conceptualized as a form of corruption. When sex rather than money is the currency in this transaction, the act often becomes classified as an intimate relationship rather than an illegitimate corrupt act. Responsibility tends to shift from the person in power to the relationship between service-provider and service-seeker, and to service-seeker incentives. Still, responsibility assigned to actors involved in sexual corruption among the public is little explored. Do regular citizens have gendered perceptions regarding the acceptability of sexual corruption victimization, and perpetration? Where is responsibility assigned? I carried out survey experiments among Norwegian respondents on hypothetical scenarios on corruption, where I varied the currency of the transaction – e.g. money or sex. In support of my expectations, respondents holding hostile sexist views blame victims more than perpetrators. Male respondents seem indifferent to type of currency when assigning responsibility, whereas women consistently assign responsibility to service-provider to larger extent than do the male respondents, and to the largest extent in cases of sexual corruption, compared to monetary forms of corruption. Norway is an interesting context to explore these underlying gendered perceptions since sexual corruption in this highly egalitarian country remains a phenomenon largely un-named.
