PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Are women less corrupt?

New study suggests it depends on cultural expectations

2013-09-13
(Press-News.org) Women are more likely than men to disapprove of -- and less likely to participate in -- political corruption, but only in countries where corruption is stigmatized, according to new political science research from Rice University.

"'Fairer Sex' or Purity Myth? Corruption, Gender and Institutional Context" finds that women are less tolerant of corrupt behavior, but only in democratic governments, where appropriating public policy for private gain is typically punished by voters and courts.

"The relationship between gender and corruption appears to depend on context," said Justin Esarey, an assistant professor of political science at Rice and the study's lead author. "When corruption is stigmatized, as in most democracies, women will be less tolerant and less likely to engage in it compared with men. But if 'corrupt' behaviors are an ordinary part of governance supported by political institutions, there will be no corruption gender gap."

Esarey noted that previous research has shown that greater female participation in government (that is, in the legislature) is associated with lower levels of perceived corruption. However, he said that his research reveals that this relationship does not exist in autocracies, where women might feel more compelled to go along with the status quo than challenge the system.

"States that have more corruption tend to be less democratic," Esarey said. "In autocracies, bribery, favoritism and personal loyalty are often characteristic of normal government operations and are not labeled as corruption."

Esarey theorized that many women feel bound by their society's political norms, including when they make decisions as government officials.

"In short, recruiting women into government would be unlikely to reduce corruption across the board," Esarey said.

The study was completed in two parts. The first part of the study evaluated corruption at the national level, using data from three organizations that monitor and measure corruption: Transparency International, the World Bank Governance Indicators and the International Crisis Risk Group. The data was collected on 157 countries between 1998 and 2007. The second part of the study evaluated attitudes toward corruption on an individual level in 68 countries, using data from the World Values Survey (WVS). WVS surveys how much people tolerate corruption on an individual level. The data was collected between 1999 and 2002.

Esarey hopes the research will encourage other scholars to study more closely the effect of gender discrimination on corruption around the world.

The study will appear in an upcoming edition of Politics and Gender and was co-authored by Gina Chirillo, program assistant for the Central and West Africa team at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Washington, D.C. The study is available online at http://bit.ly/162OnMt.

###

This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Related Materials:

Justin Esarey bio: http://jee3.web.rice.edu/

Rice University Department of Political Science: http://politicalscience.rice.edu/default.aspx

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 2 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/AboutRiceU.

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Twister history: FSU researchers develop model to correct tornado records for better risk assessment

2013-09-13
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — In the wake of deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma this past spring, Florida State University researchers have developed a new statistical model that will help determine whether the risk of tornadoes is increasing and whether they are getting stronger. Climatologists have been hampered in determining actual risks by what they call a population bias: That is, the fact that tornadoes have traditionally been underreported in rural areas compared to cities. Now, FSU geography Professor James B. Elsner and graduate student Laura E. Michaels have outlined a method ...

Underlying ocean melts ice shelf, speeds up glacier movement

2013-09-13
Warm ocean water, not warm air, is melting the Pine Island Glacier's floating ice shelf in Antarctica and may be the culprit for increased melting of other ice shelves, according to an international team of researchers. "We've been dumping heat into the atmosphere for years and the oceans have been doing their job, taking it out of the air and into the ocean," said Sridhar Anandakrishnan, professor of geosciences, Penn State. "Eventually, with all that atmospheric heat, the oceans will heat up." The researchers looked at the remote Pine Island Glacier, a major outlet ...

Scripps Florida scientists pinpoint proteins vital to long-term memory

2013-09-13
JUPITER, FL – September 12, 2013 – Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a group of proteins essential to the formation of long-term memories. The study, published online ahead of print on September 12, 2013 by the journal Cell Reports, focuses on a family of proteins called Wnts. These proteins send signals from the outside to the inside of a cell, inducing a cellular response crucial for many aspects of embryonic development, including stem cell differentiation, as well as for normal functioning of the adult brain. "By ...

Voyager 1 spacecraft reaches interstellar space

2013-09-13
University of Iowa space physicist Don Gurnett says there is solid evidence that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to reach interstellar space, more than 11 billion miles distant and 36 years after it was launched. The finding is reported in a paper published in the Sept. 12 online issue of the journal Science. "On April 9, the Voyager 1 Plasma Wave instrument, built at the UI in the mid-1970s, began detecting locally generated waves, called electron plasma oscillations, at a frequency that corresponds to an electron density about 40 times ...

Voyager 1 spotted from Earth with NRAO's VLBA and GBT telescopes

2013-09-13
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and Green Bank Telescope (GBT) spotted the faint radio glow from NASA's famed Voyager 1 spacecraft -- the most distant man-made object. According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the VLBA imaged the signal from Voyager 1's main transmitter after the spacecraft had already passed beyond the edge of the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles from the Sun that surrounds our Solar System. Using NASA's Deep Space Network, JPL continually tracks Voyager and calculates ...

Toxic methylmercury-producing microbes more widespread than realized

2013-09-13
Microbes that live in rice paddies, northern peat bogs and other previously unexpected environments are among the bacteria that can generate highly toxic methylmercury, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have learned. This finding, published in Environmental Science and Technology, explains why deadly methylated mercury is produced in areas where the neurotoxin's presence has puzzled researchers for decades. Methylmercury — the most dangerous form of mercury — damages the brain and immune system and is especially ...

Trans-Nino years could foster tornado super outbreaks

2013-09-13
Alexandria, VA – One tornado can be damaging enough; severe weather systems that spawn hundreds of deadly tornadoes in super-outbreaks pose special challenges to the scientific and emergency management communities. Now, scientists have identified certain conditions in the Pacific Ocean that may lead to super-outbreaks over the U.S.' tornado alley. Researchers are trying to determine if Trans-Niño years, which mark the onset or ebbing of El Niño and La Niña, are the main culprits behind the deadly super-outbreaks. According to the study, fueled by a powerfully interconnected ...

Esteem issues determine how people put their best Facebook forward

2013-09-13
How social media users create and monitor their online personas may hint at their feelings of self-esteem and self-determination, according to an international team of researchers. "The types of actions users take and the kinds of information they are adding to their Facebook walls and profiles are a refection of their identities," said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, Penn State. "You are your Facebook, basically, and despite all its socialness, Facebook is a deeply personal medium." People ...

Research shows denser seagrass beds hold more baby blue crabs

2013-09-13
When it comes to nursery habitat, scientists have long known that blue crabs prefer seagrass beds compared to open areas in the same neighborhood. A new study by researchers at William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science refines that knowledge, showing that it's not just the presence of a seagrass bed that matters to young crabs, but also its quality—with denser beds holding exponentially more crabs per square meter than more open beds where plants are separated by small patches of mud or sand. The study, led by VIMS graduate student Gina Ralph, appeared recently ...

Exposure/ritual prevention therapy boosts antidepressant treatment of OCD

2013-09-13
NIMH grantees have demonstrated that a form of behavioral therapy can augment antidepressant treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) better than an antipsychotic. The researchers recommend that this specific form of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) – exposure and ritual prevention – be offered to OCD patients who don't respond adequately to treatment with an antidepressant alone, which is often the case. Current guidelines favor augmentation with antipsychotics. In the controlled trial with 100 antidepressant-refractory OCD patients, 80 percent of those who ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Sometimes you're the windshield: Utah State University researcher says vehicles cause significant bee deaths

AMS Science Preview: Turbulence & thunderstorms, heat stress, future derechos

Study of mountaineering mice sheds light on evolutionary adaptation

Geologists rewrite textbooks with new insights from the bottom of the Grand Canyon

MSU researcher develops promising new genetic breast cancer model

McCombs announces 2024 Hall of Fame inductees and rising stars

Stalling a disease that could annihilate banana production is a high-return investment in Colombia

Measurements from ‘lost’ Seaglider offer new insights into Antarctic ice melting

Grant to support new research to address alcohol-related partner violence among sexual minorities

Biodiversity change amidst disappearing human traditions

New approaches to synthesize compounds for pharmaceutical research

Cohesion through resilient democratic communities

UC Santa Cruz chemists discover new process to make biodiesel production easier, less energy intensive

MD Anderson launches Institute for Cell Therapy Discovery & Innovation to deliver transformational new therapies

New quantum encoding methods slash circuit complexity in machine learning

New research promises an unprecedented look at how psychosocial stress affects military service members’ heart health

Faster measurement of response to antibiotic treatment in sepsis patients using Dimeric HNL

Cleveland Clinic announces updated findings in preventive breast cancer vaccine study

Intergenerational effects of adversity on mind-body health: Pathways through the gut-brain axis

Watch this elephant turn a hose into a sophisticated showering tool

Chimpanzees perform better on challenging computer tasks when they have an audience

New medical AI tool identifies more cases of long COVID from patient health records

Heat waves and adverse health events among dually eligible individuals 65 years and older

Catastrophic health expenditures for in-state and out-of-state abortion care

State divorce laws, reproductive care policies, and pregnancy-associated homicide rates

Emerging roles of high-mobility group box-1 in liver disease

Exploring the systematic anticancer mechanism in selected medicinal plants

University of Cincinnati researchers pen editorial analyzing present, future of emergency consent in stroke trials

Scarlet Macaw parents ‘play favorites,’ purposefully neglect younger chicks

One gene provides diagnoses for 30 patients whose condition was unexplained for years

[Press-News.org] Are women less corrupt?
New study suggests it depends on cultural expectations