Global Business and Finance Review | 2026
Authors: Tan C.
DOI: 10.17549/gbfr.2026.31.5.182
Journal: Global Business and Finance Review
Year: 2026
Publisher: People and Global Business Association
Document Type: Article
Open Access: All Open Access; Gold Open Access
Cited by: 0
Purpose: This study examines how board gender diversity affects corporate tax avoidance and investigates the moderating role of audit quality in an emerging-market context, with a particular focus on Vietnamese listed firms. Design/methodology/approach: Utilizing a balanced panel dataset of non-financial firms listed in Vietnam from 2016 to 2023, this study employs feasible generalized least squares and two-step system generalized method of moments estimators to address heteroskedasticity, autocorrelation, and potential endogeneity. Corporate tax avoidance is measured through multiple proxies, including accounting-based effective tax rates, cash effective tax rates, and book-tax differences, to ensure robustness. Findings: The results indicate that higher female representation on boards is generally associated with lower levels of corporate tax avoidance when tax behavior is proxied by accounting-based effective tax rates. However, this relationship is not consistent across all tax avoidance measures, suggesting that the governance effect of board gender diversity is sensitive to proxy selection. In addition, audit quality, proxied by Big4 auditors, moderates the relationship between board gender diversity and tax avoidance, implying a partial substitution effect between internal board monitoring and external audit oversight. Research limitations/implications: The study is constrained by limitations in assessing tax avoidance and in differentiating the roles and influence of individual female directors. Future research could investigate alternative tax proxies, director-specific characteristics, or cross-country comparisons to augment generalizability. Originality/value: This study makes a significant contribution to the existing body of literature by offering compre-hensive evidence from an emerging market regarding the conditional influence of board gender diversity on corporate tax behavior. Furthermore, it emphasizes the interaction between internal governance mechanisms and external audit quality. © The Author(s).
Audit Quality; Corporate Governance; Emerging Market; Gender Diversity; Tax Avoidance