CONTRIBUTION DE LA FEMME DANS LA GOUVERNANCE, CAS DES COMITES D'AUDIT : APPROCHE THEORIQUE

Abstract

The audit committee is one of the main governance mechanisms of a corporation. Its establishment and recognition in Morocco has gone through a first stage of standardization before being mandatory for companies offering public services (Article 106bis of Law 78-12).However, the gender approach is not taken into account, neither by the good governance laws, nor by the law on limited companies. For this reason, studying in the international literature acquire more importance in order to emphasize the aim of the adoption of this approach in Morocco and particularly in a committee considered as the pillar of control in agency theory,.Indeed, several psychological studies show the interest of the presence of women in governance bodies (Carter, Simkins, & Simpson, 2003, Konrad, Kramer, &Erkut, 2008, Landry, Bernardi, & Bosco, 2016, Srinidhi , Gul, &Tsui, 2011, Thomas & Ely, 1996, Wood, Polek, & Aiken, 1985). The representation of women in the areas of accounting and auditing is an important issue for policy makers. In this context, our research brings out three major advantages of the presence of women on audit committees in several sides. First of all, the presence of women improves the quality of financial information, more exactly by improving financial reporting; result management and results forecasting. Then, the woman presence reduces the risks due to its internal control improvement. Finally, the quality of external audit and its fees are improved by the presence of at least one woman as a member of the audit committee.

Keywords

• gender, financial reporting quality, audit quality, earning management, earning forecasts.