Gender Diversity in Board of Directors and Audit Reports Lag: Evidence From Indonesia

Abstract

In numerous countries, the establishment of gender quotas on corporate boards has been widely considered. However, Indonesia is not one of them. The research's purpose is to explore the association between gender diversity on corporate boards and audit report lag with a form of empirical data. From 2012 to 2020, there were 2,937 observations from all publicly traded Indonesian enterprises. The proposed hypothesis is tested with the fixed effect regression approach, and further robustness checks show that the conclusion is robust. The study's findings demonstrated that having gender diversity on the board, in particular on the board of directors, improves the enhancement of the audit report lag. However, if gender diversity occurs in the board of commissioners, it has no effect on the length of the audit report lag. Furthermore, this study also reveals that the audit report latency increases when the company's board achieves maximal diversity. Its first evidence indicates the impact of gender diversity on board firms on audit report lag evidence from Indonesia. The stakeholders will benefit significantly from this study regarding implementing gender diversity on corporate boards.