Does empowerment through corruption reduce gender inequalities? The case of women in sub-Saharan Africa

The objective of this study is to determine how perception of corruption affects the relationship between women’s empowerment and gender inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. To do this, it uses two estimators of the generalized method of moments on a sample of 45 countries between 2002 and 2021. It shows that empowerment produces beneficial effects in reducing gender inequalities in countries working to fight corruption. Especially regarding economic empowerment, a government integrity rating of at least 25% is required. This threshold rises to 31% for political empowerment and on average to 32% for social empowerment. These thresholds vary between the different components of each component, but they remain between 25 and 35%.