Female board directorship and earnings management Yosra Mnif Department of Accounting, Taxation and Law, High Institute of Business Administration of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia, and Imen Cherif Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to examine the impact of female board directorship on the extent of earnings management. Design/methodology/approach – The research hypotheses have been tested using both univariate and multivariate analyzes based on a sample of 198 firm-year observations from closely-held family firms listed on the SBF 120 over the period 2010–2018. Findings – The empirical results first indicate that female board participation reduces the level of earnings management. When looking at women positions in the companies’ boardrooms, the authors reveal that the negative linkage between female board directorship and earnings management remains constant for independent female directors while the opposite holds for their family-affiliated counterparts. Further, the gender quota reform is shown to mitigate the adverse relationship between gender-diverse corporate boards and the extent of earnings management. These results seem sound, as they hold unchanged for the several measures of, both, boardroom gender diversity and earnings management used in the empirical study. In a supplementary analysis, the authors provide evidence that the association between the presence of women directors on the companies’ boards and earnings management depends, in a different way, on the size of the audit firm in a joint auditing context. Originality/value – The country and the period considered in this paper are noteworthy characteristics that enhance the value of this research. The present study is relevant because it examines the relationship between female boardroom participation and earnings management using a homogeneous sample of family-owned and -managed companies within which shareholders and board members share identical motives for manipulating earnings in one of the leading countries in the world with regard to family ownership dominance (i.e. France). Moreover, this paper is considered to be very timely, as it explores, contrarily to previous related studies, the years following the implementation of a mandatory gender quota reform in one of the less available countries, to date, that have amended a gender quota law. To the knowledge, besides France, there are a few markets (Norway, Belgium, Finland and Iceland) that have implemented such legislation. Keywords Female board directorship, Earnings management, Closely-held family firms, Gender quota reform Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction Following the announcement of major corporate financial scams by large institutions around the globe (Enron and WorldCom in the USA; Transmile and Megan Media in Malaysia and Parmalat in Italy), several accounting academics have delivered significant attention to the issue of earnings management and financial reporting quality. Specifically, The authors would like to thank the editor, professor Whiting, Ros, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, suggestions and guidance on the article. Female board directorship Received 28 April 2020 Revised 12 October 2020 5 November 2020 Accepted 7 November 2020 Pacific Accounting Review © Emerald Publishing Limited 0114-0582 DOI 10.1108/PAR-04-2020-0049 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/0114-0582.htm