Gender

A person’s gender affects their experiences of corruption in many ways. It can have an impact on how likely they are to pay or take a bribe, which forms of corruption they might face, and how they perceive and act upon them.

While people across all genders, ages and races may encounter corruption, it hits poor and vulnerable groups the hardest, and women are often among them. Corruption hinders progress towards gender equality and presents a barrier for women to gain full access to their civic, social and economic rights.

In societies where women are traditionally the primary caretakers for their families, they are often dependent on public services like health or education. This makes them more vulnerable to certain types of bribery at the point of service delivery.

Corruption itself can take gender specific forms. Sexual extortion, or sextortion, is one of these practices, where sexual favours are the currency of the bribe demanded. While evidence shows that women are disproportionally targeted, men, transgender and gender non-conforming people are also affected by this form of corruption.

But women are also part of the solution and have an important role to play in anti-corruption. They can contribute to improve accountability and integrity systems and build governance frameworks that are more responsive to their needs. Involving women in public life, including but not limited to anti-corruption and the design of gender responsive and gender sensitive anti-corruption policies is an important step in this direction.

As a global movement, we are committed to mainstream gender in our programmes and operations. We are advocating for the inclusion of gender perspective in the formulation of anti-corruption policies around the world

We collect and analyse data on the relation of gender and corruption, and use them as a basis for our recommendations to policy makers. Through our Advocacy and Legal Advice centres in over 60 countries, we encourage people to report sextortion and other forms of gendered corruption.

We call on global leaders to :

• Collect, analyse and publish gender disaggregated data on the differentiated impact of corruption on men and women;
• Recognise and effectively address sextortion as a form of corruption;
• Promote women’s participation in public, economic and political life.

Mainstream gender sensitive approaches in all anti-corruption work.