Sunday, October 08, 2006

Women are often considered better caretakers for development investments like micro-credit and other development programs, because they usually have a greater interest in having well-functioning institutions that can provide good education, health care and other services for their children and families. Put simply, investing in women gives a better return than investing in men. Many studies and practical experience in the development community have confirmed this assumption.

But this article made me wonder about the long term effects of championing women as spearheaders of responsible development strategies in the developing world. Will they become just as corrupt if they are in the high-level governmental and corporate positions,from which they have been excluded in the developing world until very recently (with some important exceptions)? This article seems to say that women are just as likely to be corrupt, and that they have been seen as less likely to commit white collar crimes until recently because they haven't had the opportunity.

I tend to think that women are different than men, and that there are a lot of other factors that go into what kind of women sit in the board rooms and are able to commit these crimes (the HP spying case was only the most recent example). There seem to be so few high-level corporate women that they hardly seem to be a good sample for statistical analysis.

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