Gendered Imaginaries of Corruption – Perspectives from the Judicial System in Argentina

This article explores the social imaginaries surrounding corruption within the Argentinian justice system, focusing on their gendered aspects. Drawing on ethnographic research, this study examines how legal professionals perceive, understand, and respond to corruption within their professional environment. By means of ethnographic vignettes and analysis, this article reveals gendered patterns in how corruption is conceptualized. While male legal professionals tend to focus on large-scale cases of corruption, their female counterparts demonstrate a nuanced understanding of various forms of corrupt practices, and challenge their normalisation. Additionally, this study finds that gendered imaginaries shape perceptions of who can engage in corruption and how corrupt networks operate. Importantly, this article also considers future perspectives, revealing a gendered divide in attitudes towards the possibility of change, with women expressing optimism for cultural shifts towards greater gender equality, which they also see as related to a decrease in corruption. The findings underscore the importance of recognising and addressing the gendered dimensions of corruption, emphasising the need for a comprehensive analysis of social imaginaries in order to inform more effective anti-corruption efforts.