Research on the dynamics of corruption has increasingly investigated the relevance of a gender perspective for understanding the driving forces, manifestations, and consequences of corrupt transactions. Yet, until recently, it has rarely considered sexual services as a currency in the corrupt transaction. When border officials ask womenmigrants to pay with their bodies when they want to cross a border, it is as corrupt asasking for any other bribe in exchange. Teachers asking pupils to perform sexual services in exchange for grades abuse their entrusted authority every bit as much as if they would ask for money. When managers hand out positions, jobs, or contracts to women whohave sex with them, it is as much neglect of meritocratic principles as a nepotistic appointment would be.

This chapter focuses on the type of corruption where the transactional currency is some form of sexual service. This form of corruption, where entrusted authority is abused inorder to obtain sex in exchange for a service or benefit, is called sextortion (IAWJ, 2012; Eldén et al., 2020).

The chapter theorizes and conceptualizes sextortion as a form of corruption. It then asks the question of how the fact that the currency is sex, and not something else (e.g. money), changes the dynamics of the transaction and our understanding of corruption. Sextortion should be recognized as a form of corruption, but it also needs to be understood as something more than that. We conceptualize sextortion as an abuse of power that has elements of both corruption and gender-based violence, and which cannot be analyzed without incorporating both. In this chapter, we illustrate what sextortion is,and how gender norms act as drivers and enablers.