Are Women More Averse to Corruption than Men? The Case of South Korea

Abstract

ObjectivesPrevious research asserts that women are less prone to corruption than men. It is not without contestation, leading to a complex corpus with mixed findings suggesting that perceptions might be context‐specific. This study investigates whether, how, and under or through what conditions gender impacts individual perceptions of corruption in South Korea, a case exemplifying “Asian exceptionalism.”MethodsEmploying the World Values Survey and statistical regression techniques, we leverage a quasi‐experiment analyzing individual attitudes across all regime types in South Korea's recent history.ResultsExamining three types of corruption—state benefit fraud, tax evasion, and bribe‐taking—we find no significant differences until Korea democratizes, when we observe a surprising increase in the gap between perspectives.ConclusionsWomen's differential tolerance is mixed across types of corruption, implying that corruption is not a homogenous concept and that perceptions are conditioned by individual opportunities and constraints.