The question of whether females tend to act more ethically or risk-averse compared to males is an interesting ethical puzzle. Using a large sample of US firms over the 1992–۲۰۱۴ period, we investigate the effect that the gender of a chief executive officer (CEO) has on earnings management using classification shifting. We find that the pre-Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX) Act period was characterized by high levels of classification shifting by both female and male CEOs, but the magnitude of such practices is, surprisingly, significantly higher in firms with female CEOs than in those with male CEOs. By contrast, our results suggest that following the passage of the punitive SOX Act, classification shifting by female CEOs declined significantly, whilst it remained pervasive in firms with male CEOs. This suggests that the observable differences in financial reporting behavior between male and female CEOs seem to be because female CEOs are more risk-averse, but not necessarily more ethically sensitive than their male counterparts are. The central tenets of our findings remain unchanged after several additional checks, including controlling for alternative earnings management techniques, corporate governance mechanisms, CEO and chief financial officer characteristics and propensity score-matching.

Introduction

The introduction in the 1960s of a number of gender-focused equal opportunities laws, especially in developed countries, such as the 1963 Equal Pay Act of the US, helped in increasing women’s participation in the workforce (Khlif and Achek 2017). However, this did not necessarily lead to increased participation of women in senior management roles [e.g., board member or chief executive officer (CEO)] in companies, with ‘old-boys networks’ often cited as one of the major barriers to women’s executive career progression (Adams 2016). The past three decades have, however, witnessed significant increases in corporate, national and supra-national governance reforms, laws and affirmative initiatives explicitly aimed at increasing women’s participation in senior corporate executive roles (Adams 2016; Srinidhi et al. 2011). For instance, Canada, the EU, France, Norway, Italy and the UK have implemented either ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ gender-based quotas for large corporate board memberships, which have led to observable increases in women’s presence on corporate boards in these countries (Adams 2016; Adams and Ferreira 2009; Srinidhi et al. 2011). Discernibly, the strong push for gender-diverse corporate boards and executives is not only driven by ethical, moral and social fairness theories (Sun et al. 2017), but also economic benefits of the unique skills, experiences and talents that women bring to such roles (Carter et al. 2003, 2010). Unsurprisingly, a number of distinct empirical strands of research have emerged. An earlier relevant strand has examined the effect that gender-diverse corporate boards and women CEOs have on firm performance/value (Carter et al. 2003, 2010). With some exceptions (see Adams and Ferreira 2009; Kirsch 2017; Terjesen et al. 2009), the finding suggest that gender has a positive effect on firm performance/value (Carter et al. 2003; Gul et al. 2011; Liu et al. 2014; Ntim 2015; Shrader et al. 1997).1 Such positive gender effects have been attributed to rational-economic inspiredtheories, such as agency, resource dependence, stakeholder and stewardship theories, which indicate that the presence of women in boardrooms enhances board independence, monitoring, advisory capacity and resources through greater connection of the firm to the external environment (Adams 2016; Kirsch 2017; Terjesen et al. 2009). A more recent strand of the literature has focused on the effect that gender-diverse corporate boards and women CEOs have on corporate fraud and wrong-doing (Ho et al. 2015; Palvia et al. 2015; Peni and Vahamaa 2010; Sun et al. 2017).