Women in the Boardroom and Fraud: Evidence from Australia
JournalAustralian Journal of Management
AuthorsAlessandra Capezio, Astghik Mavisakalyan
PublishedSeptember 2016
PublisherSage
DOI10.1177/0312896215579463
ISSN03128962
We examine the relationship between women’s representation on corporate boards and fraud. Drawing on a discussion of existing studies, we hypothesise that increasing women’s representation on boards can help mitigate fraud. We provide validation to our conjecture through an empirical analysis of 128 publicly listed companies in Australia. We show that the increase in women’s representation on company boards is associated with a decreased probability of fraud. We demonstrate the consistency of this result across different robustness checks. We believe that our findings could be of interest to policy makers interested in enhancing board governance and monitoring.
The Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre team acknowledges the Wadjuk Nyungar people as the traditional owners of the land on which the Centre is situated.