Gender diverse board and earnings management: evidence from French listed companies

Sana Triki Damak

127 citations0/0 files storedSustainability Accounting Management and Policy Journal

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Gender Diversity and Inequality Auditing, Earnings Management, Governance Corporate Governance and Financial Management

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of board gender diversity on earnings management level and strategy. Design/methodology/approach This study is conducted in the French context where firms are pressured since 2010 to appoint more women on boards. More specifically, this research is based on a sample of 85 companies listed in the SBF120 over 2010-2014. A number of econometric techniques are used including generalized least squares to test the panel regressions. Findings The results suggest that women on boards are effective in their monitoring role. Indeed, the findings show a significant negative effect of board women presence on earnings management practices level. However, there is no empirical evidence that board gender diversity affects the earnings management strategy. Moreover, the results reveal that some control variables influence significantly the earnings management level and strategy. Practical implications The findings support the efforts made by French political bodies to increase gender diversity on corporate boards, and might inspire political actors of other countries to take initiatives to regulate the promotion of women’s appointment on boards of directors. Social implications This paper contributes to the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice. Indeed, the findings highlight the beneficial effects of women participation in power and decision-making positions. Originality/value This research contributes to the debate around gender diversity on boards. Most prior studies that have analyzed the relationship between gender diversity and earnings management were conducted in a voluntary context of appointing women on boards. This paper extends prior research by addressing this issue differently and in a regulated context: where the government set mandatory quotas for female board representation.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 127 citations exist upstream.

References

1976Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure 1980Agency Problems and the Theory of the Firm 2005Performance matched discretionary accrual measures 2009Women in the boardroom and their impact on governance and performance☆2002Audit committee, board of director characteristics, and earnings management 1997Earnings management to avoid earnings decreases and losses 2012Detecting Earnings Management 1999Gender differences in risk taking: A meta-analysis.

Cited by

2021Corporate social responsibility, board gender diversity and real earnings management: The case of Jordan 2021Audit committee and audit quality: An empirical analysis considering industry expertise, legal expertise and gender diversity 2020Women on Boards of Directors: A Meta-Analytic Examination of the Roles of Organizational Leadership and National Context for Gender Equality 2021Gender diversity in audit committees and audit fees: evidence from China 2020Female board directorship and earnings management

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.