Based on the notion that a diverse board takes a more balanced perspective and pays greater attention to financial reporting oversight, this paper examines the association between board gender diversity and financial reporting quality. Specifically, we study the enablers that allow women to add value to the monitoring activities in the context of limited affirmative actions to promote women on boards. We provide evidence that increased share of women on boards is associated with improved financial reporting quality proxied by reporting timeliness, earnings management, and auditor opinions. We find that in companies that do not have a sufficient number of women on boards, the critical mass effect can be replaced by the “voice” effect, i.e., it is still possible to improve financial reporting quality by having a woman chair the board.

基于多元化董事会采取更加平衡的视角并更加关注财务报告监督的概念，本文研究了董事会性别多样性与财务报告质量之间的关联。具体来说，我们研究了在促进女性加入董事会的有限平权行动的背景下，允许女性为监督活动增加价值的促成因素。我们提供的证据表明，女性在董事会中的比例增加与财务报告质量的提高有关，这些质量以报告的及时性、盈余管理和审计意见为代表。我们发现，在董事会中女性人数不足的公司中，临界质量效应可以被“声音”效应所取代，也就是说，仍然可以通过让女性担任董事会主席来提高财务报告质量。