Lower audit fees for women audit partners in Taiwan and why

Abstract

We investigate whether women audit partners earn lower audit fees than their men colleagues. By examining 2002–2011 fee data for audit engagements in Taiwan, where the names of signing audit partners are disclosed, we find that audit engagements with women audit partners are related to significantly lower audit fees than those with men counterparts. Furthermore, we document that such fee difference is aggravated in the industries with fewer women audit partners, cannot be explained by the differences in audit quality and audit reporting lags, and is robust to controlling for firm fixed effects. Our finding provides evidence to support the existence of fee discrimination against women audit partners in Taiwan's auditing industry. Our results should be of interests to audit firms with regard to human resource decisions.