Prior research has established that greater female representation in government is associated with lower corruption in that government, and that women are individually less likely to condone or engage in corruption. But these relationships are sensitive to context, suggesting that women are not simply less corrupt than men. We argue that women in elected office will be less likely to engage in corruption only when it is a risky behavior. Past research indicates that women are consistently more risk averse than men; corruption is risky when voters can detect it and punish offenders at the polls. Thus, accountability is the causal mechanism through which the gender-corruption link flows: the more likely that government officials are to be held personally accountable for corruption by being caught and punished, the more strongly that female representation should be associated with lower corruption. We find evidence for this proposition in a panel of nearly 80 democracies over the past 20 years using multiple measures of accountability and corruption.
