Board gender diversity, cultural logics, and corporate tax behaviour

Corporate tax aggressiveness tests corporate accountability, yet less is known about when board gender diversity translates into more restrained tax behaviour across institutional settings. Using 27,275 firm-year observations from 29 countries across Europe, Asia, and Australasia during 2013–2023, we examine whether board gender diversity is associated with lower tax aggressiveness and whether national culture conditions this association. Board gender diversity is negatively associated with tax aggressiveness: greater female board representation is associated with higher cash effective tax rates and more restrained tax behaviour. This association is stronger in high masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation settings, but weaker in high power distance, individualism, and indulgence settings. Results are robust to an alternative sign-reversed accrual-based tax proxy, lagged board gender diversity, placebo randomisation, entropy balancing, and two-step difference GMM. The findings contribute to business ethics, governance, and tax research by showing that culture shapes how female board representation translates into accountability-relevant tax outcomes.