Women cops less likely to take bribes?
Russia is to create its first women-only traffic police unit because commanders believe they are less corrupt than men, a newspaper reported on Monday.The male-dominated traffic police routinely forgive traffic violations in exchange for bribes. Many believe this culture helps make Russia's roads among the world's most dangerous: about 35,000 people are killed in accidents each year.
Regional police chief Mikhail Tsukruk says that "there is research which proves that women are not inclined to bribe-taking." Um, huh?
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Women cops less likely to take bribes?.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/3867
Maybe if bribe-taking is part of a good old boy culture that women officers aren't part of? Otherwise, I have no idea.
I heard a similar idea when I was working for a judiciary project in Egypt, where they don't have women judges (except for one figurehead on the constitutional court). In Morocco where they have had women judges for several years there is also this perception that they are less likely to be corrupt and they say it's backed up by research. I never saw any actual research that corroborates this perception.
Maybe men are more comfortable offering a bribe to another man than a woman? Like a variation on the15th's good old boy culture idea?
They have the same problem with sex trafficking-many of the officers take bribes, or sex in place of capturing the criminals.I watched a documentary showing bribes being offered openly in Turkey. sex trafficking is a huge problem.
It actually makes a kind of sense to me. Women are pretty well trained that if they go into a traditionally male profession, they will be held to a higher standard than the men in the profession, and therefore would be more likely to be paranoid about wrongdoing. In addition, women know that they can't rely as heavily on the old-boy network to save them when they break the rules.
I can fully believe that women are less likely than men to take bribes, because women in positions of power are under so much scrutiny. It's not inherent, there's nothing about Y chromosomes that make men more likely to accept bribes, it's just that men are taught that they can get away with it, much the same way girls tend to be penalized in classes for speaking out of turn whereas boys will be allowed to speak and often be complimented.
Did you see Tsukruk's later comment on the BBC?
Mr Tsukruk said applicants "don't have to be blondes with long legs, but we'd like them to be attractive... let people admire them!"
How did this get shunted to the bottom of the article?
The Corruption Online website has a page with two papers supporting the claim that women tend to be less corrupt. However, as far as I can tell, neither was published in a peer-reviewed journal (though both have at least plausibly reputable authors, and were sponsored by the World Bank), and should thus be taken with some caution.
The network idea is an emblem of the age of the ‘new economy’. The paradox is that we know the networks make things happen, but do not value or sufficiently invest in them because they are not tangible. The tools we have, such as industrial codes for measuring such activities, do not track in a sufficiently fine-grained way how the trade in services and ideas operates or how networking might add value.