The impact of corruption on gender in Central and Eastern Europe: how corruption challenges women's life

Abstract

This chapter identifies areas where corruption is particularly likely to negatively impact women and explores the mechanisms through which such negative impact is demonstrated - outside the political domain. We investigate how corruption limits women's access to politics, goods and services, and how it affects their human rights in male-dominated patronage networks. This research specifically focuses on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), a region vulnerable to corruption, and characterised by male dominated patronage networks and patriarchal norms. Our case studies relied mainly on documentary analysis and interviews conducted with professionals with experience either on corruption/state capture issues and/or gender issues in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. Our study illustrates that corruption disproportionately negatively impacts women and particularly women from marginalised groups, such as women from the Roma community. In particular, patriarchal cultural norms, religion and the patriarchal state itself in CEE have a negative role on good governance and policy-making, which, in turn, impacts women's rights to services, especially in healthcare and social protection.