Auditing engagement vs. client board gender diversity and independence – are there any relationships?

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of whether corporate governance in terms of gender structure of client corporate boards and CEO duality impact client's incentive and ability to engage in high-qualityaudit in companies a year before the Covid outbreak. Private and public corporations are included in the sample and statistical analysis is applied on auditor reports and client board characteristics (gender and independence) to find the existing relationships. The study revealed that client boards are more male-dominated, with much of them having CEO duality experience and therefore more being prone to engage a local auditor, much less to engage an international auditor, and reports are signed by a male auditor in more of the cases. Results also support the fact that auditing companies have been paying attention to gender issues with half of the auditors signing the report being female. It was found that gender composition of client board and CEO duality and audit opinion are not interrelated which is in line with other studies. The paper extends the growing literature on the linkage between audit quality board characteristics and it overcomes the limitation observed in previous studies by testing the idea that gender and independence are variables of primary influence on auditor engagement.