Impact of business owner’s gender on the audit firms income: the case of Kazakhstan

Abstract

Kazakhstan is characterized by women’s significant representation in the financial industry, including the audit sector, which distinguishes the country from other states and can lay the basis for a competitive advantage of the economy. The literature review on audit firms in Kazakhstan showcases a scarcity of studies about gender’s influence on audit firms’ financial performance. The paper aims to identify the correlation between business owners’ gender and the net income of Kazakhstani private audit firms. The publicly available data on audit companies and the size of their paid taxes were processed and analyzed with the quantitative research method. The data of 117 audit firms for 2021 were scrutinized through the parametric Student t-test for independent samples with the utilization of the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS). To analyze and adjust the normal distribution of the studied data, frequency histograms, taking logarithms, and formalized tests by Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk criteria were applied. The findings demonstrate the significant correlation between women owners and the size of paid taxes by their audit firms: women positively contribute to audit firms and generate higher net earnings compared with their men counterparts. The paper postulates the necessity of women’s more intensive involvement in higher levels of decision-making to increase the performance indicators of the financial industry in Kazakhstan. The study supports the idea that less gender bias in the expert field can be a good indicator of women's real contribution to Kazakhstan's economy. The auditing field should serve as a solid role model for lowering the barriers to female leadership in other industries.