Empirical Evidence on the Role of Gender in Workload Allocation in Audit Firms

In this paper, we investigate gender differences in the workload allocation process. Using a sample of 3,852 auditor-year observations and 107,213 firm-year observations from Belgium, we find that female auditors are associated with lower total and new workload levels, as measured by the number of (new) clients and the total assets of the (new) clients they serve. We find that the effect of gender on workload is particularly strong for auditors in the early stages of their careers. Furthermore, we find that female auditors are associated with higher audit quality; however, this effect largely disappears when controlling for workload. Our results suggest that differences in workload allocation may be a factor contributing to variations in audit quality levels between female and male auditors. That is, male auditors audit significantly more clients, which may constitute a risk factor to the audit quality they provide.