Abstract:

A survey that was conducted by Grant Thornton in 2017 showed that woman in Indonesia has contributed 46% of the total senior management position. The increase of woman participation in company leadership surely has its own effect especially woman character that tends to be more careful than its male counterpart. This thesis tried to investigate the impact of female chief financial officers (CFO) on accounting conservatism. In this thesis, accounting conservatism divided into two parts, earnings conservatism, and equity conservatism. This thesis also tried to search whether the convergence of PSAK to IFRS would increase woman conservatism further, where the first phase of the adoption begun in 2008 and ended in 2012. This thesis used samples from 82 companies that registered at Indonesia Stock Exchange from period 2008-2010 (Pre-IFRS) and 2012-2014 (Post-IFRS). The investigation resulted that female CFO tend to be more conservative both on earnings and equity than their male counterparts. The investigation also found that the convergence of PSAK to IFRS resulted in an increase of balance sheet conservatism by female CFO.