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✪ Guo Xiajuan

School of Public Administration, Zhejiang University

✪ Tu Wenyan

Fudan University Institute of Global Public Policy

[Introduction] Recently, the former Party Secretary of Shangfang Township, Wannian County, Jiangxi ProvinceLi Peixia was expelled from the party and removed from public office.Upon investigation, it was found that the county party secretary Mao Qi abused his power to have an improper sexual relationship with Li, and that Li violated living discipline in order to get a job adjustment or promotion.The investigation of the two not only exposed the problem of public officials abusing their power and accepting bribes, but also caused heated discussions due to the transaction process of "using sex for power".In recent years, with the fall of some corrupt female officials and the corruption facilitation of the mistresses or wives of corrupt male officials, there has been a trend of discussion on whether "women" are more honest or more corrupt, or even whether they are the source of corruption. So, are women more honest than men? What is the tolerance of female officials for corruption such as "power-for-sex transactions"?

This article points out that female public officials have a lower overall tolerance for government corruption than male public officials, especially when it comes to "sexual bribery". Female public officials have a very low tolerance for government officials' chaotic private lives and corruption involving power-for-sex transactions.Women are still at a disadvantage in official circles, so they are often on the passive side in power-for-sex transactions. They are unlikely to have the power and resources to support male lovers.In addition, due to the pressure of the gender system such as sexual chastity and being a good wife and mother, women are not in a position like men to use power as capital to obtain sexual resources, let alone actively consume male beauty.The author points out that some women who are both ambitious and capable may use "sexual capital" as a weapon to defeat male competitors, but in such transactions, women are always victims of power oppression.

The article suggests that the current world is full ofSystematic discrimination makes women more vulnerable than men. Women are more likely to be punished for breaking the rules, and their long-term low social status and high moral standards make themWomen are more inclined to obey rules, be cautious, and have a stronger willingness to avoid risks, so they are naturally less likely to participate in corruption.The author also pointed out that this difference is more influenced by social gender culture rather than biological sex.

This article was originally publishedThe original title of the 4th issue of Women's Studies in 2017 is "Are women more honest than men? An analysis based on the tolerance of corruption among Chinese public officials", only represents the author's views and is for readers' reference.

Are women more honest than men?

——An analysis based on the tolerance of corruption among Chinese public officials

Are women more honest than men? Do they have different attitudes toward corruption than men? For a long time, this controversial issue has attracted worldwide attention but it is difficult to reach a consensus. In recent years, in particular, as some female corrupt officials have been brought down under the country's high-pressure anti-corruption situation, and the corruption of the mistresses or wives behind the male corrupt officials has helped the public to argue about whether "women" are more honest or more corrupt, or even whether they are the source of corruption. The public has focused their questioning on female leaders, and even viewed the promotion of female cadres as a process of "using sex to gain power". They subconsciously attributed male corruption to the "beauty behind them" and intentionally or unintentionally magnified women's corrupt behavior. So, how should we interpret this special phenomenon in the Chinese context and break the "gender stigma" of women? Internationally, there are two main views on this issue among researchers:First, it is believed that women are more honest than men, so the political representation rate of women should be increased as an effective strategy to reduce government corruption. Second, it is argued that women are not inherently more honest and incorruptible than men. Once women have the same corruption opportunities and networks as men or are in a bureaucratic environment where corruption is prevalent, they will be as corrupt as men.In recent years, domestic scholars have joined the discussion and conducted in-depth discussions on the relationship between gender and corruption in light of China's macro-environment and historical culture.“Gender Construction of Corruption”These scholars either believe thatThe Chinese cultural environment has a constructive effect on femininity, such as the feminine qualities of being a good wife and a good mother, which may lead them to be involved in corruption for the benefit of their family;Or they believe that whether women are corrupt or not depends on the macro-environment in which they live. When women are in a government environment where corruption is rampant, or in an environment of unfair distribution of resources between the sexes, they will be as corrupt as men.In this sense, female corruption is not simply due to gender, but the result of social and cultural construction. There are not many such studies, which are mainly based on theoretical analysis and reasoning, and provide us with inspiring views.There is still very little analysis based on empirical data.。

The so-called corruption tolerance refers to the extent to which people tend to accept corrupt behavior, that is, how they understand rules and social ethics and their views on deviant behavior. It reflects people’s attitude towards corruption from a value perspective.This paper conducts a quantitative study on the tolerance of corruption between the two sexes by conducting a large sample questionnaire survey on government officials, and measures the difference in tolerance of corruption between the two sexes from an empirical perspective., think about the relationship between gender and corruption, and then respond to whether women are more honest or more corrupt in the context of a specific social system.

▍Problem

In recent years, as the high-pressure anti-corruption campaign has deepened, more and more female corrupt officials have been labeled as "using sex to gain power", which has attracted social attention to the corruption of female officials and the phenomenon of "power-for-sex transactions". Are women more honest or more corrupt than men? Or is there no question of which is more honest between the two sexes? The answers to these questions have brought many theories about gender and corruption into the public eye, such as the theory of female integrity, environmental determinism, and the "gender construction of corruption theory" that has attracted academic attention in recent years. These studies explain the relationship between gender and corruption from different perspectives and draw different conclusions.

The "female integrity theory" advocates that women are the more honest gender.Some scholars believe that differences in physiology, psychology or experience between the two sexes lead to differences in cognition, emotion and behavior between women and men, and these differences in traits make women more honest than men. David Dollar used cross-national data to make comparisons at the national level and found thatThe proportion of women in parliament has a significant negative impact on the degree of government corruption. Anand Swamy found through research on individuals and countries that: (1) On average, women are less likely to tolerate corruption; (2) Female managers are less likely to engage in bribery; and (3) Countries with a higher proportion of female representatives in government departments or markets have lower levels of corruption. Since then, more researchers have explored the relationship between gender and corruption through empirical methods. For example, Torgler Benno and Neven T. Valev analyzed eight European countries in the World Values ​​Survey data and found thatWomen are more likely to follow the rules and less likely to approve of tax corruption and cheating than menMF Rivas conducted a bribery game experiment on 102 Spanish subjects and found that women bribed significantly less frequently than men, and the amount of bribes offered by women was also significantly lower than that of men. These studies have different perspectives, but they share a common view that women are more altruistic and civic-minded, more honest, and have a lower crime rate than men. These studies are subtly permeated with gender essentialism.

"Environmental determinism" holds that women are not necessarily more honest or more resistant to corruption than men. When women have the same opportunities and networks for corruption as men or are in a bureaucratic environment where corruption is prevalent, they will become as corrupt as men.Namawu Alhassan-Alolo conducted a survey on the attitudes of 136 officials in Ghana, an African country with rampant corruption, on virtual corruption. He found that society expects certain corrupt behaviors to be regarded as moral obligations, resulting in no significant difference between women's tolerance for corruption and men's. In other words, when women are in the same corruption opportunities and network environment, they will also abide by the unspoken rules of corruption, and their tolerance for corruption will not be significantly lower than that of men. Subsequently, some scholars responded to the "theory of female integrity", arguing that it is precisely because women have fewer opportunities to participate in politics and obtain higher power to participate in corruption or develop their own networks that they are more honest and clean than men. For a long time, women have been excluded from men's reciprocal networks. They are newcomers and minorities in the political and business fields and are not familiar with the rules of corrupt transactions. As more and more women join the public sector, the difference in corruption between the sexes will disappear. Some scholars have further distinguished the relationship between women and corruption in different institutional environments based on previous research. In a democratic system, corruption is regarded as a social cancer and is severely punished, so women are more honest than men. In authoritarian countries, corruption is prevalent and even considered part of governance. In order to avoid the risk of being excluded by the environment, women integrate into the corruption network, and their attitude towards corruption is not significantly different from that of men. Other scholars refuted the theory of integrity by arguing that women's gender characteristics will be eliminated by the bureaucratic cultural environment. In a bureaucratic environment where corruption is prevalent, women are as corrupt as men. They tend to believe in environmental determinism and believe that deviant behavior can be learned in social organizations, that is, organizational socialization makes the behavior of public officials homogeneous, rather than being determined by gender.

In recent years, more and more domestic scholars have joined the discussion and interpreted "environmental determinism" as "gender construction theory of corruption" in the Chinese context.These discussions focus on the gender stigma in the current mainstream discourse of corruption, that is, the attribution of women behind male corruption, and attempt to explore the historical and contemporary construction behind it. As scholars have pointed out, starting with Moxi, Daji and Baosi, people attributed the fall of dynasties and the corruption of emperors to "beauties are the root of trouble." Today's society is also accustomed to blaming the corruption of male officials on "bedside" and "palace", and the mainstream discourse has repeatedly warned leading cadres to "manage their wives." Although some researchers believe that in China, where corruption continues to occur, female officials will not only passively integrate into corruption under the influence of the environment, but will also actively "seize all opportunities to break the law and get a share of the economic capital and various resources flowing into the pockets of male corrupt officials." However, more scholars believe that this phenomenon of women's active participation in corruption reflects a deeper institutional construction. As Song Shaopeng pointed out when analyzing the causes of female corruption, the main root cause of female official corruption or women's participation in corruption lies in the gender system. In a gendered society, men and women only choose their own recognized behaviors in their own gender institutional structure to pursue their own interests, andIn a market economy that emphasizes privatization, the gender norm of "good wife and good mother" will cause women to be involved in corruption for the sake of family interests. Liu Ying also believes that"Power-for-sex transactions" are the product of the unequal power relationship between men and women in a patriarchal society. Women who are at a disadvantage in terms of power, opportunities, and resources are in a passive position in power-for-sex transactions. Correspondingly, some scholars have found through empirical investigations that compared with the proportion of female cadres in the total number of cadres, the proportion of corruption among female cadres is significantly lower than that of male cadres. The explanation for this phenomenon is"Women are relatively cautious and conservative, and are more afraid of the risk of corruption and bribery. In addition, due to the division of labor in the family, women have relatively fewer opportunities for corruption."Even though Wang Qi and others pointed out the reality that women actively participate in corruption, when they further analyzed the reasons, they also believed that this incorrect subjectivity should be attributed to the macro environment that is unfavorable to women.Disorganized capital/resource flows to men in China during its economic transition.These studies have demonstrated from different perspectivesThe gendered roots of corruption。

It is not hard to see that there is no consensus on whether women are more honest than men. This prompts us to think:In China's specific institutional cultural context and government organizational structure, the homogeneity requirements of bureaucratic culture and corruptionTo what extent can the atmosphere offset the differences in gender characteristics? In particular, when public opinion imposes the stigma of "power-for-sex transactions" on female officials, what attitude do women in government agencies have towards this?Researchers have used bribery game experiments to measure the propensity of both sexes to bribe and accept bribes, but experiments usually only set up one corruption scenario, making it difficult to consider the differences in the respondents’ attitudes toward different types of corruption. The World Values ​​Survey (WVS) also explores the relationship between corruption and gender as a whole from the perspective of corruption, and does not distinguish between the respondents’ attitudes toward different types of corruption or deviant behavior. As for people’s attitudes toward certain specific corruption phenomena in a specific environment, such as “using sex to gain power” or “using power to gain sex”, it is even more difficult to measure. Therefore, we will useQuestionnaireBased on this, analyze the above problems.

▍Research Hypothesis

Hypothesis 1: Women’s tolerance for government corruption is generally lower than men’s.

This hypothesis is based on the "theory of female integrity" and is supported by sociological research. Sociologists analyzed crime data from several countries and found that there are gender differences in human criminal tendencies. In a series of crimes such as theft, robbery, drug abuse and violence, men are arrested or convicted at a higher rate than women. In terms of integrity, some surveys have shown that women's integrity scores have always had a stable advantage over men; social biologists believe that women, as "child-bearers" and "caregivers", are more altruistic and caring. Research in the economic field has found thatWhen there is a risk of being caught and punished, women are less willing to accept bribes than men.In reality, the crime rate of Chinese women is also lower than that of men, and the probability of corruption among female officials is also much lower than that of men. Does this mean that women's gender characteristics are inherently honest? To find the answer, we will first measure whether women's overall attitude towards corruption in various fields is more honest than men; then explore the differences in tolerance between the two sexes towards specific government corruption; finally, by controlling other variables, we will examine whether gender has an impact on tolerance for corruption.

Hypothesis 2: Women are significantly less tolerant of less harmful corruption than men.

If hypothesis 1 is confirmed, then, in today's specific government organizational structure in China, to what extent do bureaucratic culture and organizational homogeneity requirements construct people's tolerance for corruption? Or to what extent can the influence of gender characteristics be eliminated? We start with government corruption behaviors of different degrees of harm and measure people's tolerance for different corruption behaviors. This is also an internationally accepted measurement method, which divides corruption into serious corruption and petty corruption.The study found that respondents were more tolerant of micro-corruption.Environmental determinists believe that when women are in an environment where corruption opportunities and networks are prevalent, they are just as corrupt as men. In the current Chinese context, less harmful corruption is more common than serious corruption, and has greater opportunities and networks for participation. If women's tolerance for minor corruption is also significantly lower than that of men, then even a corrupt bureaucratic environment cannot completely eliminate gender differences. Therefore, the difference in male and female characteristics has a greater impact on whether women are honest or not.

Hypothesis 3: Women’s tolerance for “power-for-sex transactions” is significantly lower than men’s.

In the discussion of the gender construction of corruption today, regarding the issue of "power-for-sex transactions" with obvious gender overtones, many scholars believe that due to the inequality in the possession of resources between the two sexes and the concept of male superiority and female inferiority, women are in a dilemma of submission and coercion in power-for-sex transactions. Even if women take the initiative to use their sex appeal as capital to gain power and money, it still cannot change the fact that men are strong and women are weak, and power is less important than sex. Therefore,Whether it is "using sex to gain power" or "using power to gain sex", women will become weaklings dependent on men and puppets of corrupt officials. In the eyes of male officials, they are just consumer goods to embellish life and make it more exciting.These women may be the bargaining chip in this sex trade, becoming tools for businessmen to curry favor with or trap officials, or they may be forced to comply by the coercion and inducement of male officials. Even if it is consensual, even if women take the initiative to "use sex to gain power", it is mainly due to deep institutional and cultural factors. In the male-dominated public power field, female officials are often assigned to positions in science, education, culture, and health that have no real power, and gender stereotypes such as "emotional", "lack of courage", and "indecisive" are constructed in gender culture. In fact, whether it is "using sex to gain power" or "using power to gain sex", the reasons that drive women to make choices are often accompanied by inner struggles or even resistance. Therefore, we assume that women's tolerance for this kind of corruption cannot be the same as that of men, but will be lower than that of men.

▍Data Sources and Research Methods

We measured the tolerance of corruption among public officials of both sexes to test whether women are more honest than men. There are two main ways to measure tolerance of corruption abroad. The first is to use the World Values ​​Survey data to measure the tolerance of respondents to corruption. The World Values ​​Survey uses a scale of 1-10 to let the public around the world rate their acceptance of various deviant or illegal behaviors. Some scholars use a model similar to the World Values ​​Survey and design their own "Corruption Acceptance Survey" to investigate people's acceptance of various corruption phenomena, such as bribery, receiving gifts, and favoritism. The second measurement method is to design a bribery game experiment. The experiment includes two parties. One party is a company or individual, who can choose to bribe officials or not; the other party plays the role of a public official, who can choose to refuse or accept bribes; some experiments add the role of citizens, who choose to take the risk of reporting corruption or choose to tolerate corruption.

This paper uses a questionnaire survey to measure corruption tolerance, and uses quantitative methods such as interviews and statistical analysis to verify the above hypothesis.Corruption tolerance is measured along two dimensions:(1) Overall tolerance of corruption in China’s government, academia, and business community; (2) Tolerance of specific forms of government corruption.The questionnaire was distributed to national public officials, whose work units included party and government organs and public institutions, including eastern and western regions. A total of 1,201 questionnaires were distributed, 1,026 of which were valid, including 468 male public officials and 558 female public officials. SPSS20.0 statistical software was used to analyze the survey data, and empirical analysis methods such as T-test, factor analysis, and linear regression analysis were used to explore whether there are gender differences in corruption tolerance.

▍Gender differences in tolerance for corruption

Corruption is a social phenomenon that is influenced by multiple factors at multiple levels. Due to its concealment and lack of relevant data, it is difficult to measure it directly. The Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (CPI) currently used by most scholars is only a macro-measurement indicator of national corruption. It cannot show the relationship between individuals and corruption, and it is difficult to measure individuals' cognition, attitudes and views on corruption. Therefore, we will focus on the individual level to measure corruption tolerance and conduct gender analysis, namely: overall tolerance for corruption in various fields; tolerance for specific government corruption phenomena; tolerance for "power-for-sex" corruption.

1. Overall tolerance of corruption by both sexes

We believe that measuring the overall tolerance of corruption by both sexes should include three aspects: first, the overall tolerance of corruption in various fields by both sexes, which measures the attitudes of both sexes towards corruption in various fields from a relatively abstract and macro perspective. Second, the average of the overall tolerance of both sexes towards specific government corruption, which is measured more comprehensively and specifically by adding up multiple items and calculating the average. Third, whether gender has a significant impact is examined by controlling other variables.

First, the overall tolerance of public officials to corruption in various fields. The corruption currently discussed by scholars generally refers to government corruption or public sector corruption in a narrow sense, but in fact, corruption involves a broader meaning, including the use of power for personal gain in various fields. We examine the overall corruption tolerance of both sexes from three typical fields: government, business, and academia. Respondents use a score of 1 to 10 to make an overall evaluation of their tolerance for corruption in the three fields of China's government, business, and academia. 1 represents "totally intolerant" and 10 represents "totally tolerant". The average corruption tolerance in each field is shown in Figure 1.

As shown in Figure 1, the average tolerance of public officials towards corruption in government, business and academia is 3.32, 3.62 and 2.89 respectively, which does not reach zero tolerance.Female public officials have lower tolerance for corruption in the business, government, and academic circles than male public officials, with the mean values ​​being 0.21, 0.29, and 0.23 lower than male public officials, respectively. The lowest tolerance for corruption in the academic circle is among both genders, the highest tolerance is in the business sector, and the middle is government corruption. The T-test analysis method is used to conduct a significance test on the tolerance of corruption between the two genders, with a significance level of 0.10. The results show that there are significant differences in the tolerance of corruption in the government, business, and academic circles between the two genders, that is, the tolerance of women in the government, business, and academic circles is significantly lower than that of men.

Figure 1 Gender differences in tolerance for corruption in various fields

Data source: Questionnaire Survey on Corruption Tolerance among Public Officials 2015-2016.

Secondly, we examine the mean tolerance of both sexes towards specific government corruption phenomena.We used a 10-point scale to measure the respondents' tolerance for 13 specific types of government corruption, with 1 representing "totally intolerant" and 10 representing "totally tolerant". These 13 specific corruptions involved large-scale corruption in public security, small-scale corruption such as ant corruption and "three public" problems, work style problems such as chaotic private life, and typical government corruption such as accepting gifts and money. The mean and difference of corruption tolerance for both sexes are shown in Table 1.

The average tolerance of public officials for the 13 types of government corruption was 2.76 (10-point scale), and 66 respondents, accounting for 6.40%, chose zero tolerance for all 13 types of corruption, indicating that public officials generally have a moderate tolerance for government corruption. Mean analysis found that there is a significant difference in the tolerance of women and men for government corruption.First, the overall mean tolerance of women to government corruption is lower than that of men. The mean tolerance of women is 2.61, while that of men is 2.92. The mean of men is 0.31 higher than that of women, and there is a significant difference. (T=3.36，P=0.00) Secondly, in terms of tolerance for the 13 specific types of government corruption, the average scores of women were all lower than those of men. (See Table 1) 。T-test analysis was used, with a significance level of 0.05. Eleven of the items showed significant differences, meaning that women's tolerance for these 11 specific government corruption phenomena was significantly lower than that of men. The item with the largest mean difference was "government officials have chaotic private lives and keep mistresses", and the smallest was "corruption in order to fit in with the group". The most intolerable corruption behavior for both sexes was "government officials act as umbrellas for illegal mine owners", and the item with the highest tolerance for both sexes was "corruption in order to fit in with the group". From the data results, it can be seen that women's tolerance for most corruption behaviors is lower than that of men.

Table 1 Differences in tolerance of specific government corruption between the two sexes

Data source: Questionnaire Survey on Corruption Tolerance among Public Officials 2015-2016.

Undoubtedly, the above descriptive analysis shows that women's tolerance for specific government corruption is generally significantly lower than that of men.But does this mean that women are indeed more honest than men?In other words, the reason for women's low tolerance may not be gender, but other factors. Therefore, we further control other relevant variables, such as administrative level, years of work and economic income, to test the above conclusions. First, the administrative level is used as a control variable because some scholars believe that the higher the level of public officials, the greater their power and the greater the chance of corruption. It is because women have fewer opportunities and networks to participate in corruption that they appear to be more honest than men. The second is the variable of years of work. A survey of 442 state legislators in the United States found that the personal political experience of legislators will affect the tolerance of state legislators for corruption. Legislators who have worked in government departments for a longer time and have previous political experience are more likely to tolerate corruption because they must adapt themselves to a more or less corrupt environment. The third is the income variable. Income has always been considered an important factor affecting corrupt behavior. Some scholars believe that low income and weak supervision in the public sector will increase the motivation of officials to corrupt. We control these variables to examine whether women's tolerance for corruption is still lower than that of men. If the result is still the same, it means that there is indeed a gender difference in tolerance for corruption.

We selected the ordinal variable administrative level ("below section officer" = 1, "deputy director section officer - assistant researcher" = 2, "division level (including deputy positions) and above" = 3), the dummy variable working years ("<15 years" = 0, "more than 15 years" = 1), and income (control group: "0-2500 yuan"; "2500-10000 yuan" = 1, other = 0; "more than 10000 yuan" = 1, other = 0) as the control variables in the basic information, and conducted a linear regression analysis on the tolerance of specific government corruption. The overall variance explanation rate of the "tolerance of government corruption" scale is 68%, and the Cronbach's α reliability coefficient is 0.94, indicating that the two scales have good validity and reliability.

As mentioned above, some scholars believe that when women have access to the same number of corruption networks and opportunities as men, they will be as corrupt as men. If this conclusion is true, then after controlling for variables such as administrative level, years of service and income, gender factors should not have a significant impact, because when conditions such as level, years of service and income are the same, the corruption opportunities and networks obtained by public officials of both genders should be roughly the same. However, the regression analysis in Table 2 shows that the gender regression coefficient is -0.25 (p<0.01), that is, when public officials are at the same administrative level, salary level, and years of service, the tolerance score of female public officials for government corruption is still 0.25 lower than that of men (score range 1-10). It can be seen that gender has a significant impact on the tolerance of specific government corruption. In other words, after controlling for these variables, women's tolerance for corruption is still lower than that of men. Therefore,Hypothesis 1: “Female public officials have a lower overall tolerance for government corruption than male public officials”。

So far, the data clearly shows that women have a significantly lower tolerance for corruption than men. However, the question that the data does not and cannot answer is: Are women inherently more honest than men? In this regard, even through data processing such as controlling variables, we can only provide us with a superficial appearance at the factual level, and cannot see whether it is biological sex or social gender cultural construction that makes women more honest than men. To explore the reasons, we interviewed public officials in order to explain the deeper reasons to some extent. We interviewed 159 public officials on the question of "Are women more honest than men and explain the reasons?" 67 men and 92 women.55.2% of men believe that women are more honest than men, while 75% of women believe that women are more honest than men.In general, most respondents explained why women are more honest than men by referring to the differences in the role requirements of gender culture.

Table 2 Gender differences in public officials’ tolerance for specific government corruption behaviors (OLS)

Data source: Questionnaire survey on tolerance of corruption among public officials from 2015 to 2016. **p≤0.05; ***p≤0.01.

Due to the influence of traditional culture, women are instilled with strong family values.The pressure from the family makes women behave more conservatively, more cautiously, and more protective of their families. At the same time, they focus more on childcare and housework.The incentive to corrupt is relatively small. (Interviewee number: CSL20151103 (2) ) Women have lower desires for power, money and success than men.Men are responsible for supporting the family and have a stronger desire for money (Respondent number: WCH20151103(3) ).Women become civil servants for stability, benefits and family care, while men become civil servants for promotion to higher leadership positions and higher social status. (Interviewee No.: ZL20151103 (4) ) Women have a motherly care and therefore pay more attention to public interests than men. Women pay more attention to vulnerable groups such as women and children, and pay more attention to the improvement of social welfare and the environment.Men are less sensitive to the public interest, have more bad habits, and are more concerned about their own interests. (Interviewee number: JHY20160509 (5)).

Society generally has higher moral requirements for women, so they pay more attention to maintaining their image.(Interviewee number: HZF20160509 (6)). It is not difficult to see that the interviewees mainly analyzed the construction of gender characteristics around social gender culture. For example, the social division of labor requires women to take care of the family and bear the responsibility of raising children, which leads to higher moral requirements for women in society. It is these social and cultural environments that have created women's conservative, cautious, delicate, and more compassionate personality traits, and it is these characteristics that make women more honest. Therefore, the above remarks also prove from another perspective that the construction of social gender culture is an important factor that makes women more honest than men.

2. Gender differences in tolerance for micro-corruption

If we accept the above view on the gender construction of corruption, thenWhen public officials are in a bureaucratic culture where corruption is rampant, will this gender cultural construction be eliminated and to what extent?Because bureaucracy and its culture usually have a strong assimilative effect on its organizational members, prompting individuals to abandon their own values ​​and goals and quickly integrate into the organizational goals.When women and men are equally influenced and educated by organizational culture, will their gender characteristics be deconstructed?We selected micro-corruption for analysis. Even though women have lower power than men in the organization, their chances of participating in micro-corruption are not much different from those of men, which makes it easier for us to observe the extent of the impact of bureaucratic culture on both genders.

First, we need to classify the above 13 types of corruption phenomena, identify which corruption behaviors are micro-small, and then understand the differences in tolerance between the two sexes for different types of corruption phenomena. The KMO test was conducted on the 13 government corruption phenomena, and the KMO value was 0.954, indicating that it is very suitable for factor analysis. According to the Kaiser standard, the factors were extracted (see Table 3), and the principal component analysis extracted a total of 2 factors. The cumulative contribution rate of the factors was 67.31%, and the reliability of the two factors was 0.935 and 0.808 respectively.

Table 3 Rotation component matrix

Note: Extraction method: principal components. Rotation method: orthogonal rotation with Kaiser standardization. Note: Extraction method: principal components. Rotation method: orthogonal rotation with Kaiser standardization. a. The rotation converged after 3 iterations. Data source: 2015-2016 Questionnaire Survey on Corruption Tolerance among Public Officials.

From the rotation component matrix in Table 3, we can see that the first common factor is Q1-9, and the mean tolerance of each corruption behavior is less than 3.0, which means the tolerance of corruption is low. Because this range mainly involves some serious corruption behaviors that endanger public security or huge profits, this factor is named "serious corruption behavior". The second common factor is Q10-13, and the mean tolerance of each corruption behavior is greater than 3.0, which means the tolerance of corruption is high, mainly involving some small gifts and other less harmful and collective corruption behaviors.Such as "ant-like corruption", "accepting small amounts of money and gifts" and "corruption in order to fit in with the group",Therefore, this factor is named "micro or collective corruption behavior".

From Table 1, we can conclude that people have different tolerances for different types of corruption, and the tolerances of the two sexes for specific government corruption are not the same. For "serious corruption", the female mean is lower than the male mean, and all nine items have significant differences. For "micro or collective corruption", the female mean is also lower than the male mean. The difference is that two of the four items have significant differences, and the other two have not, namely "using the convenience of one's position to help individuals or enterprises, accepting small amounts of money or gifts from them" and "corruption to fit into the collective atmosphere". This shows to some extent that the specific bureaucratic culture, especially the corrupt cultural atmosphere, has a certain deconstructive effect on the construction of gender culture, but the extent is not great.In other words, micro-corruption such as bribery and gift giving occurs from time to time in many government departments, and public officials involved in such corruption have more opportunities to participate and less risk of punishment. As for the phenomenon of "corruption for integration", it is the product of the unspoken rules and collective pressure within the bureaucratic system, and both men and women are inevitably affected by it.

However, looking at the above analysis, the tolerance of both sexes for serious corruption is significantly lower, and the tolerance difference is large, and the tolerance of women is significantly lower than that of men. However, both sexes have a higher tolerance for micro or collective corruption, and the tolerance difference is getting smaller. It is worth noting that even so, the difference between the sexes has not disappeared.The average score of men on the four types of micro-corruption is 3.56, while that of women is 3.34. Women’s tolerance is still significantly lower than that of men. (T=2.20, P=0.03). Based on this, we classified the gender differences in tolerance for the 13 government corruption behaviors with different degrees of harm (see Table 4).

As can be seen from Table 4, in the context of frequent corruption, the probability of women participating in corruption will increase just like that of men. However, the data shows that the difference between the two sexes still exists, and generally speaking, women are still more honest than men. Based on this, we believe that the gender characteristics of individuals in a specific bureaucratic organization will be affected by the bureaucratic organizational culture, but will not be completely eliminated by the organizational culture. It can only be a partial factor affecting the tolerance of corruption between the two sexes. In other words, gender culture and bureaucratic culture interact with gender characteristics. While gender culture shapes the differences in gender characteristics, organizational bureaucratic culture partially eliminates the differences between the two sexes. However, due to the disadvantaged position of women in the public sector and their inability to fully integrate into the political circle of men, the eliminating effect of bureaucratic culture is not very strong. It is in this sense thatHypothesis 2: "Women's tolerance for micro-corruption is significantly lower than men's" was confirmed.

Table 4 Gender differences in tolerance for corruption of different degrees of harm

Data source: Questionnaire Survey on Corruption Tolerance among Public Officials 2015-2016.

3. Gender differences in tolerance for corruption involving power for sex

The so-called power-for-sex transaction, also known as "sexual bribery," "refers to a state official using his power and the benefits of power to have sexual relations with another party to satisfy physiological desires and emotional needs; while the other party seeks improper benefits by directly selling sex or indirectly hiring beauty in exchange.In order to further examine the differences in tolerance between the sexes for different types of corruption, especially the impact of corruption culture on the gender construction of corruption in the context of bureaucratic organizations, we chose to measure the most controversial phenomenon of "power-for-sex transactions". The results of the attitude survey on "government personnel's chaotic private lives and power-for-sex transactions" showed that the average tolerance of men was 2.63, while that of women was only 2.07, with a difference of 0.56, which was the largest difference in tolerance between the sexes among the 13 specific government corruption behaviors (see Figure 2).

Figure 2 Comparison of tolerance of specific government corruption between the two sexes (1-10 points)

Data source: Questionnaire Survey on Corruption Tolerance among Public Officials 2015-2016.

This significant gender difference largely reflectsThe values ​​of male-dominated power structures in gender relations. Although many corrupt female officials have been exposed for keeping mistresses, in general, "chaotic private lives and power-for-sex transactions" seem to be more serious among male officials. From the perspective of the distribution of power in the bureaucratic system, men have an absolute advantage in terms of both the number of officials and the proportion of high-level positions. They have more resources and ability to trade power for sex. It is reported that 90% of corrupt officials at the department and bureau level have kept mistresses, and there are multiple people sharing mistresses. Women are still in a weak position in the officialdom, so women are often passive in power-for-sex transactions. They are unlikely to have the power and resources to keep male lovers. From the perspective of the gender system, using power to consume women is a typical sign of a patriarchal society. Women can easily become victims of power-for-sex transactions or money-for-sex transactions. In addition, due to the pressure of the gender system such as sexual chastity and being a good wife and mother, women are not as well-positioned as men to use power as capital to obtain sexual resources, let alone actively consume male beauty. Therefore, even in the bureaucratic organizational culture, women's tolerance for power-for-sex transactions is lower than that of men.

Our survey data also proves this point. Among the 13 corruption behaviors, female public officials have the lowest tolerance for power-for-sex transactions, which to some extent shows their dissatisfaction and protest against the patriarchal society where men occupy resource advantages and play with women. Wang Qi (2014) believes thatDuring the economic transformation, wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of men, forcing women who have lost equal opportunities to "use any means necessary" to divide up the wealth and resources that should belong to them. Therefore, female officials will use their own "sexual capital" to gain power.Song Shaopeng (2015) believes that Wang Qi’s inference lacks a logical link, namelyNo matter how bad the environment is, the vast majority of women do not necessarily choose corruption or the use of sexual capital, and it is not easy to break through the gender system of sexual chastity and the political norms of law-abidingness.

Indeed, our research findings are consistent with Song Shaopeng's views to some extent.In general, female public servants have a low tolerance for government officials’ chaotic private lives and corruption involving power-for-sex transactions. In theory, when people have a psychological aversion and disgust towards a certain type of behavior, they are generally not inclined to participate in that type of behavior. Therefore, our data means that the vast majority of female public servants will not use their own “sexual capital” to seek power. Of course, in the political field where power resources are heavily biased towards men, it is not ruled out that women will change their original intentions during their career development.In reality, we can also find that a large number of female officials have been reported to "use their sex to gain power". But the problem is that the underlying reason why female officials "use their sex to gain power" is not their gender itself, but because women are in a disadvantageous position in the political field. As pointed out by Meng Xiaosi, vice chairman of the All-China Women's Federation, there are several characteristics of female cadres in China: more deputy positions and fewer principal positions; more "empty positions" and fewer "real positions"; more low-level positions and fewer high-level positions; more "marginal" departments and fewer "mainstream" departments.What is particularly important is that the concept of "male superiority and female inferiority" still has an impact on the promotion of cadres. Women are considered to lack rationality, courage, and are not suitable for leadership. Compared with men, women have fewer development opportunities and promotion space. In this case, some women who are both ambitious and capable may use "sexual capital" as a weapon to defeat male competitors.But even so, overall, female public officials have a lower subjective willingness and tolerance to use their sex to gain power, indicating that women's desire and actions to pursue power in this way are lower than men's.

▍Conclusion and Implications

A study on gender differences in tolerance for corruption among Chinese public officials found thatWomen are significantly less tolerant of most forms of government corruption than menHowever, we do not believe that this difference is determined by biological sex, but rather byThe construction of gender culture has led to women being more honest than men。

First, we updated the previous researchers’ understanding of “female integrity” based on “gender essentialism”, namelyWomen’s innate biological gender has the advantage of resisting corruptionAlthough our data shows that women are less tolerant of corruption than men, the reason is:This integrity does not come from biological gender characteristics, but is the result of the construction of social systems and gender systems.The gender division of labor has led to different experiences for both sexes. Women’s experience is associated with care and “no harm” in childbirth, which makes women more compassionate and caring, and more inclined to be honest and upright. In addition,The widespread systemic discrimination in the world today makes women more vulnerable than men. Women are more likely to be punished if they break the rules. However, their long-term low social status and high moral performance requirements make women more inclined to obey the rules, be cautious, and have a stronger willingness to avoid risks, which naturally makes them less likely to engage in corruption.Therefore, when we say that women have a lower tolerance for corruption than men, the subject we are referring to is the female group that is already in the process of socialization and is constructed by the gender system, rather than women as biological sex.

Secondly, bureaucratic culture may eliminate some female characteristics, but it will not completely assimilate them. Instead, it is a process of construction in which the two are intertwined.Our research found that women’s tolerance for extremely harmful corruption is significantly lower than that of men, while their tolerance for micro or collective corruption is higher, and the gender difference is smaller, but women’s tolerance is still lower than men. This shows that bureaucratic culture does partially eliminate female characteristics, especially when women are in an environment where corruption is prevalent, there are more corruption opportunities, and the risk of corruption is low, their chances of corruption will definitely increase. However,Bureaucratic culture does not completely assimilate the characteristics of both genders; women's unique experiences and characteristics still make it more honest.Therefore, unlike previous studies (either leaning towards the theory of female integrity or leaning towards the theory of environmental or gender system determinism), we believe that the tolerance of corruption among public officials is indeed affected by gender, but this refers to the social gender constructed by the system and gender system during the socialization process, rather than the biological gender; the tolerance constructed by the social system is both the result of the construction of a specific gender culture and the effect of the construction of a specific bureaucratic culture. The two often interact with each other, rather than being an either-or relationship. Bureaucratic culture will have a deconstructive effect on the construction of the gender system to a certain extent, but from the data, it can be seen that the construction of gender culture in China today still has a greater impact on women.

Thirdly, women’s tolerance for corruption in the “power-for-sex trade” is significantly lower than that of men., and it is the one with the largest difference in corruption tolerance between the two sexes among the 13 specific government corruption behaviors.This shows that there is a huge difference between the two sexes in their views on this issue, which is a manifestation of patriarchal culture.“When power favors men, women become the objects of male power’s favor.” In the public sector where power is biased towards men, “power-sex transactions” are the benefits that power brings to men. Once an ordinary or even ugly man is given power, he will have infinite magical charm, making him full of purchasing power in the sex market.Therefore, in terms of moral attitude, even upright male officials usually laugh off the scandals in the officialdom because they are not victims;Women involved in power-for-sex transactions may be victims who succumb to the coercion and inducement of male officials; they may also be victims who want to make a difference in their careers but are unwilling to gain power through sexual capital, so they remain unknown; they may also be "victims" who profit from power-for-sex transactions but may be condemned by social morality and their inner selves. In either case, women are always victims of male oppression in such transactions. From the survey data, it can be seen that male public officials of both sexes have a much higher tolerance for this than female public officials, which shows thatMen are more accepting of this unequal "sex trade"Therefore, it is neither objective nor fair to simply attribute male corruption to "bedside" and "palace", or to simply attribute female corruption to the decline of female morality.

The above findings have certain implications for creating a social atmosphere of zero tolerance for corruption.First, since women’s tolerance for corruption is generally lower than men’s, increasing women’s political representation can help reduce corruption.Influenced by the traditional ideas of "women are the cause of trouble" and "male superiority and female inferiority", public opinion seems to focus more on women's involvement in corruption, especially using sex to gain power and lovers' involvement in corruption. This attitude of looking at women with "tinted glasses" is obviously a reflection of the outdated gender culture. Therefore, in the process of building an anti-corruption system in China today, the positive role of women should be fully utilized, including increasing the political participation rate of women, allowing women to fully participate in the political decision-making process, and through measures such as conducting dialogues between the two sexes, promoting decision-making based on the differences between the two sexes, and realizing scientific decision-making on the basis of fully taking into account the common interests of both sexes; secondly, constructing a new gender system, promoting an advanced gender culture based on gender equality, and exploring the role of women as "half the sky" in social, political and economic affairs, rather than staying on stereotypes and malicious speculations about women. Let women develop their personalities in a free and fair social and cultural atmosphere, promote equal dialogue and communication between the two sexes, and form common value goals for the two sexes on the basis of fully taking into account the common interests of both sexes.Especially in today's increasingly in-depth anti-corruption struggle, women have the opportunity to give full play to their unique gender advantages and contribute to resisting corruption.