New Research Grant to Establish a Research Environment on Sexual Corruption
Elin Bjarnegård, professor at the Department of Political Science. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt
Sexual corruption is a global issue, yet the phenomenon remains relatively underexplored in corruption research. Elin Bjarnegård, professor at the Department of Political Science, is the research leader of the new research environment, "Sexual Corruption: Understanding, Measuring, and Preventing Abuse of Power for Sex.", which has been awarded an 18 million SEK research grant from the Swedish Research Council.
The aim of the research environment is to contribute new knowledge on how sexual corruption can best be understood, measured and prevented. While the phenomenon of sexual corruption is not new, it still represents a relatively new concept within corruption research.
– Sexual corruption is a form of corruption, and corruption is the abuse of power for personal gain. However, when we think of corruption, we usually think of the personal gain as money or favors of various kinds. We rarely consider sex as a form of exchange or bribe.
Sexual corruption is problematic for many reasons. For those directly affected, it can be deeply stigmatizing, leading to severe personal and professional consequences. The stigma is worsened by the fact that sexual corruption frequently goes unnoticed by organizations. Due to its transactional nature, sexual corruption is often not recognized as sexual harassment.
– The fact that sex is part of an exchange, rather than the result of physical coercion, can be mistaken for consent. It may be difficult to draw the line, but we argue that conditional sex does not constitute consensual sex.
Elin Bjarnegård and her research team will specifically focus on investigating sexual corruption within higher education and the judicial system, with an initial emphasis on Scandinavia and South Africa. A significant challenge they face in their work is the difficulty of measuring sexual corruption.
– Corruption in itself is notoriously difficult to measure, and sexual corruption is even more difficult because it is a relatively unknown concept. People may not even be aware that their experiences fit the category of sexual corruption. There is also the problem that many victims perceive themselves as complicit, which makes reporting unlikely. Another challenge is that sexual corruption is sometimes so institutionalized that it is not perceived as something deviant. The first thing we need to do is thus to contribute to a better understanding of the components that should be included in a measurement of the phenomenon.
With an 18 million SEK grant from the Swedish Research Council, the research environment can take a long-term approach and strengthen collaborations with world-leading experts and institutions in corruption research, such as Transparency International, the Quality of Government Institute, and the UNCAC Coalition (United Nations Convention against Corruption). Elin Bjarnegård hopes that the research will pave the way for sexual corruption to be recognized as a vital aspect of anti-corruption efforts in the future.
– I hope that sexual corruption, both at the UN level and in Sweden, will be acknowledged as an obvious potential form of corruption that needs special attention. Because it is corruption – but it is a specific form of corruption that we need to improve our understanding of.