CORRUPTION AND SEX TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN AND GIRLS UNDER THE CONTEXT OF WOMEN’S POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT. A quantitative cross-sectional study

Sammanfattning: All over the world, millions of women and girls are sexually exploited in a lucrative human trafficking business. They represent so-called “hidden populations”, where the exact number of victims is unknown. Hence, investigating sex trafficking requires an in-depth understanding of what factors drive this criminal activity and, therefore, under what contexts the situation of women can improve. Despite arguments in the literature that corruption is a root cause fuelling human trafficking, limited research has explored how corruption affects sex trafficking exclusively. The existing scholarship also discusses the importance of women’s political empowerment (WPE) in curbing corruption and advancing gender-specific policies, including violence against women. In this thesis, building on previous research, I first argue that corruption reduces the presence and effectiveness of anti-sex trafficking legislation and, second, develop theoretical arguments on how WPE might moderate this relationship. By conducting a quantitative cross-sectional analysis among 131 countries, I find empirical confirmation that higher levels of corruption lead to worse anti-sex trafficking laws and enforcement. The expectation that WPE would weaken the negative effect of corruption on the adoption and enforcement of anti-sex trafficking laws finds only weak support, and the finding is sensitive to the corruption measurement employed. Thus, this thesis contributes to the understanding of corruption as a key determinant of sex trafficking and the role of WPE in advancing anti-sex trafficking legislation and enforcement. Future research should conduct more rigorous tests on the moderating effect of WPE, considering the limitations of this study, and also explore in detail what corruption types contribute the most to sex trafficking of women.