The Fight Against Corruption In Africa: The Role Of Women Participation In Governance And In The Labour Market

Abstract

The controversial debate of associating women with less corruption has been extensively discussed and analyzed with cross-country, micro, and experimental data mostly for the western world. However, this assertion on the impact of women participation in governance and in the labour market on corruption has received less attention in Africa. Using the percentage of women in parliament and in the labour force as proxies for women participation in governance and in the labour market respectively, the study provides evidence on their relationship using a panel data of forty–six (46) countries in Africa for the period, 2012–2016. In accounting for endogeneity issues purported to exist in the corruption literature, the study adopted the two-step system GMM estimation technique to yield consistent and efficient estimates for the effect of women participation on corruption. Like other empirical studies, the study accounts for the regional diversities, time-invariant effects, and unobserved country-specific effects. The study provides robust evidence of a significant negative relationship between women in parliament and corruption. However, the relationship between women in the labour force and corruption was not significant. This findings suggest that women may not necessarily be innately honest but concludes that, the impact of women in fighting corruption is manifested significantly in policy making. Again, the prediction by some scholars that the negative effect of females in parliament on corruption would diminish over time because of their newness in the political space was tested with a long-run analysis. However, women participation in parliament even showed a greater significance and a higher impact on corruption. Meanwhile, other economic and institutional factors like GDP per capita, government effectiveness, press freedom, and urbanization proved to be important factors in the fight against corruption in Africa.