Ethical practices of earnings management: are differences related to gender or occupation?

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Recent works in the gender literature identify some masculinization of women's behaviors withincompanies. However, the scope and significance of this phenomenon remains largely unexplored with moststudies tending to focus on one particular hierarchical position or job. The present study considers the rangeof occupations in the accounting sector, identifying the positions of chief financial officer (CFO), financialanalyst, and statutory auditor (the stakeholders) to consider whether the different earnings management (EM)practices are deployed differently by men and women occupying the same accounting positions. The ethicalEM practices applied to the above three hierarchical positions show that a masculinization process might bemitigating gender differences among these upper accounting positions. We draw on an original accounting59stakeholder survey conducted at the international level to propose an econometric model that identifies theeffects of both gender and job position on EM practices. Our results confirm that the relationship betweengender and ethics is not obvious since women tend to favor less ethical EM practices. They confirm also thatdecisions about the type of EM depend on the type of stakeholder - CFO, analyst, statutory auditor - involvedin the financial reporting process. We introduce interaction effects which show that these practices per positiondepend on gender: female analysts and female auditors are subject to EM definitions that are in line with thoseof their male counterparts and in contrast to the position of female CFO, these job positions favor moreethical instruments. We discuss the implications of the heterogeneous masculinization process we identify.Overall, our work on the EM phenomenon contributes to research on gender differences and their complexityby providing more fine grained information on professional differences