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BACKGROUND: Gender differences in attitudes towards depression gives reason to believe that sociocultural gender norms play a role in other areas. OBJECTIVE: The aim was to test (i) if the likelihood to think that sick leave with depression symptoms is not reasonable varies between women and men, and (ii) if the likelihood to think sick leave is not reasonable varies depending on the gender of the individual with depression symptoms. METHODS: A study population of 3147 participants responded to a web-survey with a written case briefly describing a man or woman with symptoms of depression. Respondents were asked if they thought it is reasonable that the person was sick listed for two weeks. Logistic regression was used to analyse the data. RESULTS: After controlling for age, education, self-rated health, and respondent's own experience of sickness absence the adjusted OR was 1.45 (95% CI 1.25–1.67) for men being less likely to think sick-leave was reasonable. Gender difference decreased when adjusting for negative attitudes towards depression (adjusted OR 1.24, 95% CI 1.06–1.44). No difference was found between how women and men thought about sick leave in relation to the gender of the case described in the vignette. CONCLUSION: Men were more likely to think that sick leave was not reasonable with decreased OR after adjustment for negative attitudes towards depression. Gender norms might be part of the explanation for differences but are challenging to test. This study contributes to a bourgeoning research field on gendered attitudes and sick leave, in terms of theoretical reasoning and methodological choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing attention among advocacy organizations about the urgent problem of sextortion and other ways in which sexual forms of corruption hurts vulnerable people. Yet, scholarly understandings of this challenge are, conceptually and empirically, underdeveloped. In this Working Paper, we make three contributions: First, we elaborate on the concept and discuss how to define sextortion, i.e., what it is and what it is not. Towards that aim, we trace the use and evolution of the concept and present empirical illustrations of where, in which sectors, the phenomenon thus far has been detected. Second, we analyze the first cross-national survey that includes questionnaire items gauging sextortion. This survey helps to disentangle where, geographically, the problem is prevalent and what individual factors that seem to increase the risk of experience sextortion. Third, we discuss a future research agenda on this theme and provide suggestions on what research questions this vein of study should be posing. Systematic empirical studies are scant, and thus there is little knowledge about the scope of the phenomenon. Therefore, we propose, as a next step, more of theoretically informed survey research. We conclude by discussing potential recommendations for policy that would come out from such renewed research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concepts such as risk aversion and anxiety have received renewed attention in various strands of gender and politics research. Most contemporary scholars suggest that gender gaps in this area are related to social norms and stem from social learning rather than from inherent gender traits. Very few, however, elaborate on the gender variable to reach a fuller understanding of the dynamics at work. In this study, we examined gender gaps in levels of anxiety, an area closely related to risk aversion, and we applied a combination of categorical measures of gender distinguishing between "woman, "man," and "other" and scales capturing grades of femininity and masculinity in individuals. We label this approach fuzzy gender , and we suggest that it can be used to advance research in our field. The key finding is an interaction effect between categorical measures of gender and fuzzy gender: The more female characteristics in women, the higher the levels of anxiety. Moreover, there is no difference in levels of anxiety between men and women with few female characteristics. The data used draw from a large-scale survey among Swedish citizens in 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive literature demonstrates a relationship between gender and corruption, with women being less involved in corrupt transactions than men. There are two major ways of explaining this correlation; one emphasizes differences between men and women in risk-aversion and the other differences in pro-social behavior. However, whether there is support for these explanations is never directly tested. We take advantage of one opportunity for gathering this evidence by replicating and extending a well-cited experimental study by Alatas et al. (2009). Through our extension of the Alatas et al. study, we were able to collect unique information on gender differences in rationalizations of experimental subjects' behavior. The key finding is that we see significant gender differences in reasons for behavior: the results indicate risk-seeking behavior among men but not risk aversion among women. Instead, pro-social reasoning is apparent among women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disappointed by the numerous failures of anticorruption reforms, international organisations, scholars and policy makers increasingly place their hopes on measures aimed at enhancing gender equality and in particular increasing the inclusion of female representatives in elected assemblies. Yet most studies to date focus on aggregate measures of corruption and fail to explain why the correlation between women's representation and levels of corruption occurs. Using newly collected regional‐level, non‐perception‐based measures of corruption, this study distinguishes between different forms of corruption and shows that the inclusion of women in local councils is strongly negatively associated with the prevalence of both petty and grand forms of corruption. However, the reduction in corruption is primarily experienced among women. This suggests that female representatives seek to further two separate political agendas once they attain public office: the improvement of public service delivery in sectors that tend to primarily benefit women; and the breakup of male‐dominated collusive networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents results from one of the first global studies on the relationship between media sexism and the share of candidates for the lower chamber of national parliaments who are women. Data on media sexism come from the Global Media Monitoring Project, the most reliable worldwide source for media coverage from a gender perspective. The data on share of female political candidates come from the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The results show that that there is, even when controlling for the number of women in parliament, electoral system, gender quotas, level of human development, level of women's rights, freedom from corruption, and media access, a significant relationship between media sexism—measured as (i) the share of all news subjects that are women and (ii) the share of all news subjects portrayed in the function of experts who are women—and the share of women candidates for parliament: the higher the level of media sexism, the lower the share of women candidates. The theory discussed zooms in on a bystander effect: We hypothesize that sexist portrayals of women in the media stifle ambition among women who, in a less sexist media environment, would be willing to stand as political candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Stigmatizing attitudes toward persons with mental disorders is a well-established and global phenomenon often leading to discrimination and social exclusion. Although previous research in the United States showed that conservative ideology has been related to stigmatizing attitudes toward mental disorders, there is reason to believe that this mechanism plays a different role in the context of a universal welfare state with a multi-party system such as Sweden. Furthermore, "mental disorders" may signify severe psychotic disorders, which may evoke more negative attitudes. This suggests the importance of specific studies focusing on the more common phenomenon of depression. This paper investigates the relationship between political ideology and stigmatizing attitudes toward depression in Sweden. Methods: This study is part of the New Ways research program. Data were collected by the Laboratory of Opinion Research (LORE) at the University of Gothenburg in 2014 (N = 3246). Independent variables were political ideology and party affiliation. The dependent variable was the Depression Stigma Scale (DSS). Data were analyzed with linear regression analyses and analyses of variance. Results: More conservative ideology (B = 0.68, standard error [SE] = 0.04, P < .001) and more conservative party affiliation (F(8 2920) = 38.45, P < .001) showed more stigmatizing attitudes toward depression. Item-level analyses revealed a difference where the supporters of the conservative party differed (P < .05) from supporters of the liberal party, with a higher proportion agreeing that "people could snap out of " depression if they wanted to; the populist right-wing party differed from the conservative party with a higher proportion agreeing on items displaying people with depression as "dangerous" and "unpredictable." Even self-stigma was highest among the populist right-wing party with 22.3% agreeing that "if I had depression I wouldn't tell....". Conclusion: Political ideology was associated with stigmatizing attitudes toward depression in Sweden. The results also confirm the need to distinguish between different forms of conservatism by observing social distance as being a more important driver among voters for the populist right-wing party compared with personal agency and responsibility among voters for the more traditional conservative party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are a growing number of studies with the ambition to present causal reasoning linking the presence of women in political organizations to reductions in levels of corruption. The theoretical mechanisms proposed are however seldom directly tested, instead scholars tend to use designs where a large number of control variables are introduced in order to "rule out" rivalry hypotheses. These designs leave us with a number of loose ends that needs to be more carefully dealt with. The aim of this paper is to introduce a new and comparatively simple way of measuring degrees of femininity and masculinity and discuss whether this approach could add to the understanding of gender effects found in research on corruption. The analysis show that femininity is linked to pro-social values and the suggestion is for future research to focus more on indirect effects on corruption from the inclusion of women in political organizations. Exposure-based theories highlight mechanisms such as changed group norms that may pave the ground for an increased focus on the public good. The data used draws on a large-scale survey among Swedish citizens in 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides the first comprehensive empirical test of how women’s presence in politics affects male politicians’ attitudes toward gender equality as an abstract ideal and their personal willingness to strive for women’s interests. Using a unique survey of all 13,000 locally elected politicians in Sweden (response rate 63 percent), we find a negative association between a greater presence of women and male politicians’ personal willingness to strive for women’s interests. However, there is no such effect on male politicians’ support for gender equality as an abstract ideal. We argue that the found pattern can likely be explained by the fact that it may be costly for male politicians to personally strive for women’s interests, whereas it does not cost them anything to commit to gender equality as an abstract ideal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on a multidisciplinary approach to explore the causal links between gender and sociotropic anxiety, this article studies the characteristics and magnitude of gender differences in anxiety to a range of social risks and threats. Specifically, it tests whether gender differences with regard to perceived vulnerability, personality traits, ideology and values, and awareness (political interest and news media exposure) mediate the effect of gender by means of mediational regression analyses. The analysis also includes a test for acquiescence bias. Gender is found to be a significant predictor of an individual's sociotropic anxiety. Vulnerability, personality traits, ideology and values, and awareness all mediate the effect of gender. A significant effect of gender remains even when all other mediating factors were taken into consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents evidence from 18 European countries showing that where levels of corruption are high, the proportion of women elected is low. We hypothesize that corruption indicates the presence of ‘shadowy arrangements’ that benefit the already privileged and pose a direct obstacle to women when male-dominated networks influence political parties’ candidate selection. There is also an indirect signal effect derived from citizen’s experiences with a broad range of government authorities. The article uses data that are more fine-grained than usual in this literature. We conduct an empirical test on a new dataset on locally elected councilors in 167 regions in Europe. Using a novel measure of regional quality of government and corruption we perform a multi-level analysis with several regional- and national-level controls. This study provides a unique picture of the proportion of women in locally elected assemblies throughout Europe and a new way of understanding the variations found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]