Female Directors And Audit Quality

Research on the relationship between the board of directors and audit quality has a long history.Recently,countries around the world have issued a series of regulations and policies aimed at increasing the proportion of female directors on the board of directors.This has led to a new direction in the study of the relationship between board of directors and audit quality.The idea behind the above legislation is usually that female directors help to better play the supervisory role of the board.However,this possible connection has not received widespread attention from accounting and finance staff.Because women are generally considered to have large differences with men in terms of personality characteristics,risk appetite,and moral values,such differences may affect the board of directors and affect the quality of auditing,so it is necessary to study them.Based on principal-agent theory,high-level team theory,team theory and human capital theory,this paper analyzes the role of female directors and several characteristics of female directors on audit quality,and puts forward the research hypothesis.Based on the study of the proportion of female directors,we have further studied the impact of several characteristics of female directors(age,education and professional background)on audit quality.On the basis of theoretical analysis,this paper selects the audit and financial data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2012 to 2017,and conducts empirical tests using multiple linear regression models.The results show that there is a significant positive correlation between the proportion of female directors in listed companies and the quality of auditing;the higher the average academic qualifications of female directors,the greater the impact on audit quality;the proportion of female directors with financial background and legal background is directly proportional to the quality of the audit;the adjustment effect of the average age of female directors on their proportion and audit quality remains to be tested.Finally,based on the above conclusions,some policy recommendations are proposed.