Chasing Shadows: Untangling the Gender-Education-Corruption Nexus in Vietnam

Corruption continues to be a main obstacle to development, reducing the efficiency of resource use, slowing down economic growth and setting the stage for human rights violations. Although corruption has a negative impact on all communities, empirical evidence suggests that men and women perceive its manifestations and outcomes differently. Similarly, they encounter different forms of corruption and demonstrate different attitudes towards combating corruption. At the global level, there is increased recognition that the promotion of gender equality, empowerment of women, and implementation of anti-corruption programs are mutually reinforcing development strategies. In Asia, corruption is on the rise, and it is increasingly reported in education settings, both impacting student advancement, but also driving school dropouts among marginalized populations. For the most privileged, study abroad offers a way out from navigating local corruption schemes impacting access to higher education. While international development and humanitarian aid organizations have begun focusing attention on anti-corruption work in education settings, the scholarly literature on its relationship to gender equality and education progress has yet to emerge. This paper aims to fill that gap, first through an exploration of literature on education and corruption, gender and corruption, and gender and education in Southeast Asia, and then presenting empirical data collected through ethnographic methods in Vietnam from 2014-2024.

Findings reveal that to women, petty corruption, or the everyday abuse of entrusted power by low- and mid-level public officials and community leaders, is most visible as they try to access basic goods or services in places like hospitals, schools, police departments, land management agencies, and when they apply for jobs. Managing petty corruption – or what many call “chasing shadows” – is rarely captured in formal measures of corruption, or in anti-corruption campaigns, yet it is women's work requiring tremendous social and political capital to navigate to avoid corruption.