Do gender-diverse boards improve financial statements comparability? Cross-country evidence

This study investigates whether board gender diversity improves the comparability of financial statements using an international sample of 16,002 firm-year observations from 55 countries over the period 2017–2023. We predict that gender-diverse boards enhance reporting comparability by strengthening monitoring and broadening perspectives in financial decision-making. Consistent with this view, we find a positive association between board gender diversity and firms’ reporting comparability. The results are robust across alternative measurement approaches, including the Blau index and industry-adjusted comparability scores, as well as dynamic panel models and two-stage least squares estimations, which mitigate endogeneity concerns. Our findings further show that this relationship is context dependent. The effect of board gender diversity is stronger in emerging markets and in countries without gender quota mandates, and varies systematically across cultural environments. In addition, the reporting benefits of gender diversity emerge only after boards reach a critical mass of female directors. This study contributes to the literature on board diversity and financial reporting quality by providing large-scale international evidence that gender-diverse boards are associated with more comparable financial statements and offer relevant implications in the convergence of financial reporting practices across jurisdictions.