Audit partner gender effects on UK charities’ audit quality and audit pricing

We investigate the effect of audit partner gender on audit quality and audit pricing in UK charities, a setting that is fundamentally different from the for-profit sector. Employing an extensive dataset of UK charities from 2009 to 2019, we demonstrate that charities are more likely to receive a qualified audit opinion and less likely to report zero fundraising expense when women audit partners are engaged, suggesting higher audit quality. Furthermore, we show that charities pay higher audit fees to women audit partners than to their male counterparts, consistent with the higher quality of audit service they deliver. Checks for endogeneity and self-selection bias confirm the robustness of our main findings.