Previous research has suggested an association between a politician’s gender and their likelihood to engage in corrupt behavior. A World Bank study from 2001, for instance, found that “one standard deviation increase in [female participation in government] will result in a decline in corruption... of 20 percent of a standard deviation". This perception has been behind some well-publicized campaigns, such as Mexico City’s plan to employ all-female traffic cops in some areas.This suggests - not proves, but suggests - that absent social pressure to remain chaste, women will behave as badly in the sexual sense as men. Which is what we have largely observed in the post-sexual revolution decline in female moral standards. The fact that female behavior is not yet, on average, quite as bad as male behavior is likely in part due to the fact that some sexual double-standard still exists.
But the new study by political scientists Justin Esarey and Gina Chirillo of Rice University argues that this effect is highly dependent on institutional context. In a political culture “where corruption is stigmatized, women will be less tolerant of corruption and less likely to engage in it compared to men,” they write. “But if corrupt behaviors are an ordinary part of governance supported by political institutions, there will be no corruption gender gap.”
That could be because women face a different level of incentive to not be corrupt. Voters, in general, tend to punish female politicians more harshly for corrupt behavior, and their political positions in general are more tenuous. “When voters find out men have ethics and honesty issues, they say, ‘Well, I expected that,’" Celinda Lake, a U.S. Democratic party pollster told the New York Times last year. . “When they find out it’s a woman, they say, ‘I thought she was better than that.'
All this is to say, when you take consequences out of the picture, there’s not that much difference in behavior. Esarey and Chirillo describe an experiment conducted “in the United States and Burkina Faso where they found that, compared to men, women are equally likely to accept bribes in the absence of monitoring but are substantially less likely to accept bribes when being monitored.”
Female susceptibility to social pressure is why slut-shaming is so effective. This is also why feminists, being anti-civilizational barbarians, are so focused on preventing both men and women from slut-shaming. Of course, the same tactic can be used against them by relentlessly pointing out that they are rude barbarians at war with both decency and civilization itself.
So, never apologize for making a woman feel bad about her sexual history or hesitate to do so. In doing so, you are defending civilization.
