Female Governance Representation, Female Audit Partners, and Key Audit Matter Reporting in Japan

This study examines whether female governance representation and the presence of a female signing audit partner are associated with key audit matter (KAM) reporting in Japan. The descriptive sample comprises 9808 firm-year observations for Japanese listed companies from 2021 to 2023; primary multivariate analyses use 9794 complete cases. KAM headings were manually collected and classified as account- or entity-level matters. Poisson and zero-truncated Poisson models with firm-clustered standard errors are the primary KAM-count specifications; Tobit is retained only as a supplementary check. The interaction between female audit-partner involvement (FEAUD) and female governance representation (FEBOARD) is negative in both count models, but evidence is limited and model-dependent; the corresponding p-values are 0.067 in the Poisson model and 0.293 in the zero-truncated Poisson model. Supplementary estimates are also negative, although statistical significance varies across specifications. Conditional KAM-count differences are small and emerge mainly at higher levels of female governance representation. Evidence for total KAM-section length is weaker, and length checks indicate that any negative total-length association reflects fewer KAMs rather than shorter descriptions per KAM. Type-specific analyses provide only weak descriptive evidence. The findings are associational and do not directly measure communication, coordination, or disclosure quality.