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The moderating effect of women The

moderating
directors on the relationship effect of women
directors
between corporate social
responsibility and corporate
tax avoidance? Evidence Received 20 January 2021
Revised 17 February 2021

from Malaysia 22 August 2021

4 January 2022
31 May 2022
7 September 2022
Riguen Rakia, Maali Kachouri and Anis Jarboui Accepted 10 November 2022
University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia

Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to provide a valuable contribution by exploring the moderating effect of women
directors on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate tax avoidance of
Malaysian listed companies.
Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on a sample consisting of 78 Malaysian firms over the
2010–2017 period. A moderation model that specifies the interaction between CSR, women directors and
corporate tax avoidance motivates this study.
Findings – The results show that a high level of CSR is negatively associated with corporate tax avoidance in
firms with a higher percentage of women on the board.
Practical implications – The findings may be of interest to the academic researchers, investors and
regulators. For academic researchers, it is interested in discovering the dynamic relation between CSR,
woman on the board and tax avoidance. For investors, the results show that the existence of female
directors on the board reduces the corporate tax avoidance. For regulators, the results advise the
worldwide policy maker to give the importance of female roles to improve the engagement firms in CSR
reporting.
Originality/value – This paper extends the existing literature by examining the moderating effect of women
directors on the relationship between CSR and corporate tax avoidance in the Malaysian context.
Keywords Women directors, Tax avoidance, Corporate governance, Corporate social responsibility
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
Countries in both developed and developing economies put more attention on dealing with
corporate social responsibility (CSR) in their corporations. However, despite advanced
research leading to theoretical developments in the conceptualization of CSR in advanced
economies (e.g. North America, United Kingdom (UK) and Western Europe), relatively few
studies in developing countries have examined evidence of CSR (e.g. Latin America, Africa
and Asia).
CSR refers to strategies corporations or firms conduct their business in a way that is
ethical, society friendly and beneficial to the community in terms of development. It is a
form of corporate responsibility in repairing environmental damage and social inequalities
caused by the company’s operational activities (Dewi and Gunawan, 2019). CSR
performance has also been the subject of scrutiny by various parties. Diab and
Metwally (2020) present an inclusive view of corporate social and environmental
responsibility as practiced in developing countries, which based not only on rational Journal of Accounting in Emerging
Economies
economic perspectives, but also on social, familial and political aspects that are central to © Emerald Publishing Limited
2042-1168
the present complex institutional environment. In this context, Carroll (1991) provides that DOI 10.1108/JAEE-01-2021-0029
JAEE CSR integrates economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibilities into corporate
decision-making, advocating firms to consider the interests of stakeholders beyond their
shareholders. In the same area, CSR is one of the key issues that have been brought to the
fore by corporate governance over the last decade; this is essentially due to its role in
showing a company’s commitment to corporate governance and ensuring its public
accountability (Jo and Harjoto, 2012).
Recently, Barbosa and de Oliveira (2021) how that positive relationships between CSR
reporting and both savings deposits and fee income. Mohmed et al. (2019) indicate that CSR
has a positive association with earnings quality only in the top CSR scoring firms. This
suggests that firms with relatively lower CSR scores may use CSR to “greenwash” weaker
earnings. In addition, several studies have tried to analyze the relation between the CSR
and taxation (Lanis and Richardson, 2012; Desai and Dharmapala, 2006; Hoi et al., 2013;
Watson, 2015). Firms innately have the incentive to minimize corporate tax expenses,
which is a cash outflow. In this area, tax avoidance constitutes firms’ efforts to reduce their
tax payments to taxing jurisdictions through various means, some of which are legal and
others, known as tax aggressiveness, whose legality may be questionable. Therefore,
Napitupulu et al. (2019) found that tax avoidance is an effort undertaken legally and safely
by companies without violating the applicable taxation provisions, as methods and
techniques used are to take advantage of weaknesses contained within the Tax Laws and
Regulations.
Because both taxation and CSR constitute a diversion of resources toward nonshareholder
stakeholders, the link between CSR and tax avoidance has drawn considerable interest
recently.
Recently, investigators have examined the effects of CSR on tax avoidance. Hoi et al. (2013)
present findings consistent with a negative relation between CSR and tax avoidance. They
interpret their results as evidence that tax avoidance is an indicator of corporate culture that
is associated with a lack of CSR. In contrast, Davis et al. (2016) present findings consistent
with a positive relation between CSR and tax avoidance and conclude that firms do not view
tax avoidance as part of CSR.
In the Malaysian context, Karundeng et al. (2020) show that companies with high CSR
activities assumed that tax payment became a part of CSR, so they did not consider CSR and
tax payment to be separated and mutually replaceable. L
opez-Gonz
alez et al. (2019) find that
social and environmental performance is negatively related with tax avoidance so that firms
with a greater socially responsible performance show a lower tax-saving practice.
In addition, prior studies examining the relation between CSR, tax avoidance and women
directors have been limited to investigating the direct association and have not considered the
indirect analysis. Particularly, they did not analyze the interaction effect of other structural
and contextual characteristics of the company that have significant influences on
organizational decision-making. Therefore, it is interesting to study the indirect link
between corporate tax avoidance and CSR. In this perspective, the present study aims to
investigate the moderating effect of women directors on the relationship between CSR and
tax avoidance in Malaysian context.
Concerning the relation between the presence of women on the board and CSR, Issa and
Fang (2019) show that board gender diversity is positively associated with the level of CSR
reporting in two countries, namely, Bahrain and Kuwait. In emerging market (Malaysia,
Pakistan and Thailand), Yasser et al. (2017) find a significant relationship between board
gender diversity and enhanced adoption of CSR. In this context, Bristy et al. (2021)
underscores the importance of considering gender in furthering the understanding of how
firms address the CSR–CFP (corporate financial performance) nexus.
Regarding CSR issues, a large body of literature has examined extensively the
relationship between CSR and tax avoidance on the one hand and the relationship
between CSR and women directors on the other hand. Furthermore, few studies have The
examined the contribution of the role of women directors on the relationship between CSR moderating
and corporate tax avoidance.
Given these weaknesses in the literature, the present study makes both theoretical
effect of women
and practical contributions. It provides a theoretical contribution to the literature on taxation, directors
gender diversity and CSR by suggesting the establishment of dynamic associations between
tax avoidance and CSR. The empirical findings of this study provide answers to questions
about the direct relationship between taxation and CSR and the effect of women directors on
this relationship. Our findings have practical implications that may be useful to the academic
researchers, practitioners, who are interested in discovering taxation strategies and their
relationship with CSR.
In this study, we investigate the role of CSR in taxation with the broader CSR literature by
investigating how women directors moderate the relation between CSR and tax avoidance.
In fact, firms with a higher percentage of women on boards support the highest level of CSR.
Women are more communicative and cooperative (Eagly and Carli, 2007), they take greater
account of the needs of stakeholder and they are more sensitive about society, environment
and ethics (Kovermann and Velte, 2019). Accordingly, female directors are more likely to
encourage the firm to adopt a more socially responsible approach (Nwude and Nwude, 2021;
Nguyen et al., 2021; Govindan et al., 2021; Xie et al., 2020). Recently, Nwude and Nwude (2021),
Nguyen et al. (2021) and Govindan et al. (2021) approved prior results and concluded that
boards with high percentage of feminine directors support higher level of CSR. For this
reason, studying the relationship between women on the board and CSR on the one hand and
their relation with tax avoidance on other hand, seems very important to prove the major role
of female in the firms.
Malaysia provides an interesting context to analyze the moderating effect of women
directors on the relationship between CSR and tax avoidance. In fact, the Malaysian
government has taken the lead among other Asian countries in recommending that all
companies appoint at least 30% of women at the decision-making level. In addition, Malaysia
presents a different corporate governance environment than its counterparts in developed
countries. Therefore, these characteristics offer an opportunity for theoretical extensions.
Therefore, Adams et al. (2015) suggests considering other aspects of diversity such as skills,
experience and ideas, as they are equally important. In 2007, the revised Malaysian Code of
Corporate Governance (MCCG) proposed that the nominating committee should consider the
skills, knowledge, expertise and experience of a candidate for a board of directors (Malaysian
Code of corporate governance, 2007, 2012). In 2011, corporate governance plan emphasizes
the need for the board to ensure that it has the right mix of members with the right skills and
experience to deal with the complexities of business, competition and change. In response to
the aforementioned reasons, this study attempts to fill the void by examining the association
between board diversity, particularly gender and educational background, and the CSR
reporting of Malaysian listed companies (PLCs). A few literature on diversity on board in
developing countries in general and Malaysia in particular.
Our study offers three distinct contributions to the literature on CSR in general and to
research on women executives in particular. First, our study contributes to examine the
moderating effect of women executives on the relationship between CSR and tax avoidance.
It enriches the literature and provides new evidence regarding the effect of women executives
in predominantly Muslim countries (e.g. Malaysia). This study is the first attempt to evaluate
the role of board gender diversity in influencing powerful Chief Executive Officer (CEOs) and
shareholders who manipulate tax planning for their benefits.
Second, this study reports that female directors have a better impact on CSR and tax
strategies. This result provides additional insight into the impact of gender diversity on
taxation and CSR performance. The results give the important implication that the
JAEE association between CSR performance, taxation and women executive depends on the culture
in which the company operates. Third, other studies have shown that female in, the board has
a positive association with CSR performance. However, these studies primarily focused on the
United States (US) and the UK as they rely on the KLD’s database, which generates CSR
ratings for American and British companies. Thus, the study highlights the role of women
directors in curbing organizational malpractices in a male dominant society to validate the
effectiveness of CSR in Malaysia.
The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 defines the Malaysian context. Section 3
presents the theoretical framework. Section 4 describes a review of the literature and the
research hypotheses. Section 5 presents the methodology, which takes into account
description of the sample, a definition of the variables and the analyses used. Section 6
presents the main empirical results. Finally, Section 7 presents the robustness test and
concluding remarks are given in Section 8.

2. The Malaysian context

In Malaysia, 78.8% of the source of revenue is from tax revenue and mainly contributed by
the corporate income tax (Suffian et al., 2017). The Malaysian government has readily
sketched various tax incentives in order to inspire the firms available in Malaysia.
The common tax rate in year 2016 of a firm is set at a benchmark up to 24%. Therefore, with
tax incentives, firms can increase their after tax return by paying less for corporate tax.
The Malaysian Government is also trying their best to reduce the tax rate over the years in
order to ease investors and attract them to invest more (Razali et al., 2018). In fact, one of the
incentives given by the Malaysian government is Pioneer Status. Under Pioneer Status, this
incentive reduces the amount of taxable income. Therefore, eventually the effective tax rate
(ETR) of the firm will also be low. In Malaysia in particular, a survey conducted by Klynveld
Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG) to determine the level of fraud covering the period January
2010 to December 2012, found that 27% of those surveyed had experienced unethical
behavior in the workplace during the investigation period. To be precise, the most common
unethical behavior is a management conflict of interest, which accounted for 71% (KPMG,
2013). Thus, this indicates that Malaysian companies also own their share of the faults.
Malaysia is one of many Asian countries whose influence by the Asian Financial Crisis.
In fact, corporate scandals that happened in several countries such as Enron the US, Satyam
in India and Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) in Malaysia, for this reason the introduction of
Sarbanes-Oxley Act in US and the MCCG in Malaysia were necessary to provide legal system
of these countries. So several countries realized the importance of having good corporate
governance to create an environment for corporate sectors to be efficient and to sustainable
performance. Therefore, in 1997 Malaysia has indicated the weaknesses in corporate
governance shown by the failure of numerous companies during and after the crisis. In March
2000, Malaysia provides the MCCG 2000. In this context, to ensure corporate governance
principles aligned with the current business MCCG and tax compliance practices and market
developments, the code revised in 2007, 2011 and 2012. Recently, MCCG 2017 added gender
diversity as a step to provide board diversity. In fact, firms expected to have 30% of women
on their boards in line with the latest MCCG. In this case, Malaysia is the first Asian country to
achieve at least 30% of women directors on the boards of the top 100 public listed companies
by 2020.
Concerning CSR Malaysia launched a new sustainability framework, in 2015 containing
amendments to existing listing requirements is providing sustainability guidelines to companies
listed in Malaysia, and introduced an indicators disclosed in the economic, social and
environmental aspects of sustainability show the quality of the organization’s sustainability
reporting (Orazalin and Mahmood, 2018; Amran et al., 2014). Therefore, companies
reporting their CSR in order to fulfill the expectation of the stakeholders of the company to be The
accountable and more transparent in reporting of the company’s activities. In this context, in moderating
Malaysia, following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the Malaysian Institute of Corporate
Governance was established in 1998 and subsequently the MCCG. The code present one of the
effect of women
best practices in corporate governance included in the code is that the board should receive directors
information that is not only financial-oriented, but also other performance indicators such as
customer satisfaction, product and service quality, and environmental performance. This
practice could be expected to put some pressure on company management to engage in
more socially responsible activities and hence disclosure in annual reports. Therefore, In 2006
Bursa Malaysia introduced a CSR framework and guideline in 2006. The CSR framework is
essentially a set of guidelines for Malaysian public listed companies to assist them in CSR
practices.

3. Theoretical framework
The implementation of CSR is an effort by the company to be able to benefit its stakeholders
(Dewi and Gunawan, 2019). The stakeholder theory orders the firm to represent all the
different stakeholders who affected or affected by the organization (Freeman, 1984).
Stakeholder theory would thus argue a negative relationship between CSR engagement and
tax avoidance. Prior literature argue that higher CSR engagement firms will be less likely to
avoid taxes compared to lower CSR engagement firms (Hoi et al., 2013; Huseynov and Klamm,
2012; Lanis and Richardson, 2012, 2015; Watson, 2015). In fact, stakeholder theory argues
that stakeholders (like employee, communities, suppliers) have an effect on the relationship
between CSR and tax avoidance. In fact, women in top management team as a stakeholder
may have an impact on the CSR engagement and taxation behavior.
Another theory seems important to our research, such as resource dependency theory.
Therefore, in relation to the influence of women in the decision-making process of adopting a
tax strategy, Kastlunger et al. (2010) and Lanis et al. (2017) argue that women on the board of
directors do not engage in tax planning activities. Gender plays a major role in the corporate
decision-making process (Lee and James, 2007). The resource dependency viewpoint,
suggests that firms depend on external resources from stakeholders and legitimacy is
essential to maintain their support (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978). Resource dependency theory
on the other hand is based on the view that in order to survive, firms usually depend on
external units through which they can exchange and acquire certain resources and, from a
corporate governance perspective, firms seek to structure membership of the corporate board
on this basis (Terjesen et al., 2009). As discussed above, resource dependency theory suggests
that firms depend on external units for resources (Terjesen et al., 2009; Pfeffer and Salancik,
1978) and that increased resource diversity in the boardroom helps the corporation in
understanding and responding to its environment (Bear et al., 2010). In this sense, the diverse
board has the potential to enhance board effectiveness, as there will be more pooled resources,
and thereby influence performance, in this case, CSR reporting. According to the stakeholder
theory and the resource dependency theory, the diversity of the board can affect the
relationship between CSR and corporate tax avoidance (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978;
Freeman, 1984).

4. Literature review
In this section, we explain the relation between tax avoidance, CSR and women directors.
In fact, two hypotheses developed in this study. The first present the relationship between
CSR and tax avoidance. The second presents the moderation role of women directors on the
relationship between CSR and tax avoidance.
JAEE 4.1 Corporate social responsibility and corporate tax avoidance
A large and growing body of literature has investigated the relationship between CSR and tax
avoidance. In this context, McWilliams and Siegel (2001) define CSR as “actions that appear to
further some social good beyond the interests of the firm and that which is required by law”
(p. 117). Carroll (1991) provides that CSR constitutes economical, legal, ethical and
philanthropic responsibilities, which Carroll interprets as: “the CSR firm should strive to
make a profit, obey the law, be ethical, and be a good corporate citizen”. Islam et al. (2021) find
a significant and positive relationship between slack resources and CSR expenditure. This
result also supports the traditional thinking about corporate giving that doing well enables
doing well. Second, the author shows that increases in free cash flow are associated with
increases CSR expenditure. This indicates the presence of agency problems between
managers and shareholders regarding CSR expenditure. Therefore, Hanlon and Heitzman
(2010) define tax avoidance as the reduction of explicit taxes, and research addresses a wide
spectrum of tax avoidance: tax management, tax planning, tax aggressiveness, tax evasion
and tax sheltering. Several studies conducted empirical research on the relation between CSR
and corporate tax avoidance. Based on a sample of 3,304 observations between 2002 and
2014, Renselaar (2016) find that the CSR score of companies negatively related to their ETR.
Lanis and Richardson (2012) investigate 408 Australian companies for the 2008/2009
financial year. They find that a higher level of CSR disclosure of companies relates to a lower
degree of tax aggressiveness. In their recent study in 2018, they indicate that the presence of
outside directors on the board magnifies the negative association between CSR performance
and tax aggressiveness.
In order to predict the relationship between CSR, tax avoidance and woman on top
management team, it is useful to include shareholder theory, stakeholder theory and
dependence theory as a theoretical explanation in prior research. The perspectives on CSR
partly based on shareholder and stakeholder theory.
Desai and Dharmapala (2006) argue that, CSR could potentially influence the tax
aggressiveness in terms of how firms account and direct their systems and processes with
regards to the welfare of society as a whole. Hoi et al. (2013) investigate the relation between
aggressive tax avoidance and irresponsible CSR activities. They find that companies with
excessive irresponsible CSR activities are more aggressive in avoiding taxes. The paper by
Watson (2015) shows the same results, indicating that socially irresponsible companies are
more tax aggressive and have greater unrecognized tax benefits compared to other
companies. In addition, in their study, Hoi et al. (2013) find that the CSR is negatively
associated with book-tax differences. If managers engage in CSR based on a moral
imperative, they predict that the negative association between CSR and book-tax differences.
Huseynov and Klamm (2012) investigated the CSR practices of S&P 500 firms from 2000 to
2008. Contrary to Lanis and Richardson (2012), they found that more socially responsible firms
are more likely to be tax aggressive. Landry et al. (2013) show based on a sample of Canadian
companies, that the tax behavior of a company not necessarily aligned with its CSR.
Christensen and Murphy (2004) also assert that, companies’ attitude towards CSR legitimately
influences their decisions on the extent of and preparedness of reducing their tax liability.
Prior et al. (2008) find a significant positive relationship between earnings management
and CSR in regulated firms, and advance that, the better the CSR activities in a company, the
more the company manages its earnings. Chih et al. (2008) using 1,653 firms from 46
countries, found out that CSR has a negative relationship with earnings smoothing and
positively related to earnings aggressiveness. Similarly, Muller and Kolk (2015), in an Indian
sample, find that multinational enterprise subsidiaries with a good CSR reputation pay
higher ETRs. In Malaysian context, Karundeng et al. (2020) show that the higher the level of
CSR activities, the higher the company’s responsibility for its tax obligations. Moreover, CSR
has a stronger influence on decreasing tax avoidance if large companies carry out CSR.
 Mao (2019) shows that CSR firms have higher book-tax differences and lower ETRs. This The
indicates that CSR firms are more aggressive in their tax avoidance. These findings imply moderating
that firms engage in CSR activities as a risk management strategy. Davis et al. (2016) indicate
that CSR negatively correlated with five-year ETRs and positively related to the amount
effect of women
spent on tax lobbying. In addition, Abdullah (2020) found that there is a positive association directors
between CSR and tax avoidance, and firms headquartered in low financial-tax reporting
conformity jurisdictions are more likely to engage in CSR to hedge against the potential
negative consequences of aggressive tax-avoidance practices as compared to firms domiciled
in countries with high level of financial-tax reporting conformity. Abd-Elmageed and Abo
Ashour (2021) found that that companies involved in tax avoidance strategies are likely to
increase CSR disclosures. These results are consistent with the legitimacy theory that
companies increase ESG disclosures to alleviate community concerns about lower tax
payments and build legitimacy. In the same area, Formigoni et al. (2020) suggest that the
higher the companies’ commitment to social, environmental and governance issues, the lower
their likelihood of engaging in socially irresponsible behaviors such as tax avoidance.
According to the theories, empirical literature and research setting, we state the following
hypothesis:
H1. Corporate social responsibility affects negatively corporate tax avoidance.

4.2 Corporate social responsibility, corporate tax avoidance and women directors
A cluster of clues suggests that a significant feminization of boards could improve the
transparency and ethics compliance of companies. Coffie et al. (2018) show that the degree of
multinational activities has a positive association with both quality and quality of CSR
disclosures. The results also show that certain corporate governance characteristics such as
board size (quality and quantity) as well as the presence of a social responsibility
subcommittee of the board (quality) have a positive relationship with CSR.
In this context, we propose an explanation of the impact of women directors on the
relationship between CSR and tax avoidance.
In addition to the stakeholder theory, another theory seems important to our research,
such as resource dependency theory. Therefore, in relation to the influence of women in the
decision-making process of adopting a tax strategy, Kastlunger et al. (2010) and Lanis et al.
(2017) argue that women on the board of directors do not engage in tax planning activities.
Gender plays a major role in the corporate decision-making process (Lee and James, 2007).
In fact, Hoseini and Safari Gerayli (2018) found that the presence of women on corporate
boards would enhance CSR due to more dependency on ethics, thereby contributing to
attitudinal changes in tax ethics and timely payment of tax.
Few theories have considered the issue of gender diversity in board of directors. One of the
most famous theories, which has examined the issue, is the resource dependency theory,
which explain that board resource diversity enhances understanding, problem solving skills
and network connections and thereby helps the corporation in understanding and
responding to its environment (Bear et al., 2010). Resource dependence theory has
implications regarding the optimal divisional structure of organizations, recruitment of
board members and employees, production strategies, contract structure, external
organizational links and many other aspects of organizational strategy (Pfeffer and
Salancik, 1978).
David et al. (2007) and Mart
ın-Ugedo et al. (2018) argue that the resource dependence
theory applies to female participation in the top management team, and many scholars
agree that female executives provide a unique advantage to the firms. In the same context,
female participation in the top management team can help the organization to acquire the
external resource and take full advantage of the internal resource (Wu and Cheng, 2016).
JAEE Recently, there was an increase in studies on the role of women on the board. In this area,
Friedman and Schustack (2009) argue that the characteristics of men and women influence
the decision makers of the board of commissioners and the directors. Reguera-Alvarado et al.
(2017) analyzed the role of gender leadership in the decision-making body of a firm. These
studies argue that, when a woman joins a firm’s top management team, the team becomes
more diverse, in terms of both social categorization and information. In the same area,
Elmagrhi et al. (2019) find that the proportion and age of female directors have a positive
effect on the overall corporate environmental performance and indicate that the proportion
and age of female directors also have a positive effect on the three individual environmental
performance components, namely, environmental strategy, implementation and disclosure.
Recent evidence (Nadeem et al., 2017; Michelon et al., 2013; Ahmadi et al., 2018;
Garc
ıa-Izquierdo et al., 2018) suggests that gender diversity is relevant to the decision-making
process of a firm; it enables a company to achieve a good governance structure, ethical and
strategic decision-making processes, economic and financial efficiency, and more
transparency. In this context, we propose a several studies to explain the relation between
women directors, taxation and CSR.
In fact, Adhikari et al. (2019) found that firms where women have more power in the top
management team, measured by female executives’ plurality and pay slice, face fewer
operations-related lawsuits. However, the authors suggest that firms where women directors
have more power avoid lawsuits partly by avoiding some risky but value-increasing firm
policies, such as more aggressive Recherche and development (R&D), intensive advertising
and policies inimical to other parties. Furlotti et al. (2019) showed that a positive association
between the presence of women in the role of chairperson and the CSR disclosure. In fact,
Set
oPamies (2015) show that gender diversity has a positive influence on CSR. Female talent
can play a strategic role in enabling firms to manage their social responsibility and
sustainable practices appropriately. In Malaysian context, Widuri et al. (2020) find the
positive effect on board gender diversity on tax avoidance through mediation of
sustainability performance. Recently, Nguyen et al. (2020) found that women on corporate
board have a wide range of corporate financial and nonfinancial performance. He suggests
that board size and governing board meetings are positively associated with Chinese firms’
environmental performance, whilst board independence and gender diversity have positive
but insignificant association with firms’ environmental performance. As such, women
directors may be more likely to be proactive in addressing environmental concerns than men
directors. Further, research demonstrates that women have an attachment to and wish to
protect the environment largely than men (Bord and O’Connor, 1997).
Terjesen et al. (2009) indicates that women in the corporate board’s research are about
improving corporate governance through better use of the whole talent pool’s capital, as well
as about building more inclusive and fairer business institutions that better reflect their
present generation of stakeholders.
In this vein, past literature (Larrieta-Rub
ın de Celis et al., 2015) documented that female
leadership style encourages CSR practices, with women directors considered drivers of CSR
activities (Harjoto et al., 2015; Set
oPamies, 2015; Landry et al., 2016). In the same vein, Ibrahim
and Hanefah (2016) argue that the level of CSR disclosure has increased over the period of
study. The results also reveal a positive and significant association between the level of CSR
disclosure and board diversity variables.
Kastlunger et al. (2010) found that women were more compliant than men and more
male-typical individuals. They showed that women and men also differed regarding their
taxpaying strategies; whereas for men audits increased subsequent evasion, women’s tax
payments less affected by prior audits. Lanis et al. (2017) examine a negative and statistically
significant association between female representation on the board and tax aggressiveness.
They attribute more ethical values to female than to male directors, which indicate that men
have a better attitude to influence the decision-making process of adopting a tax strategy. The
In 2019, Hoseini et al., show that the presence of women on corporate boards reduces moderating
corporate tax avoidance. Jarboui et al. (2020) show that the level of tax avoidance decreases
when the level of women on the board increases. In the Indonesian context, Luxmawati and
effect of women
Prihantini (2020) argue that gender is able to moderate the effect of CSR on tax avoidance directors
(see Figure 1).
Overall, the presence of women directors moderates the association between CSR and tax
avoidance. Accordingly, we state the following hypothesis:
H2. Women directors moderate the relation between CSR and tax avoidance.

5. Research design
5.1 Sample
This paper used is the top 100 companies based on market capitalization listed on the main
Board of Bursa Malaysia. Furthermore, the study excludes the financial companies due to the
different regulations adopted by these companies compared to other sectors. The exclusion of
financial firms is justified by the fact that they governed by a special legislation in the
preparation of their financial statements and by specific sector accounting standards.
This paper used a convenience sample of 78 Malaysian listed companies (nonfinancial
sector). The study period ranges from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2017.
Thus, 78 firms and 624 observations will make up our sample construct, as depicted in
Table 1. Our database has been collected from the DataStream database. This study is done
according to the quantitative data analysis (see Table 2).

5.2 Measurement variables

5.2.1 Dependent variable. The dependent variable in this analysis is the extent of corporate
tax avoidance. ETR measures corporate tax avoidance. Thus, ETR helps to estimate the
effectiveness in companies’ tax planning activities (Mills et al., 1998; Phillips, 2003). Salihu
et al. (2014) define cash ETR as the proportion of cash taxes paid to the accounting
income before tax. Dyreng et al. (2008) explained that the cash amount of tax paid help to
minimize the likely effects of items such as valuation allowance and tax cushions. In this

CSR H1
Tax avoidance

H2

Figure 1.
Women directors Conceptual framework

Sample Number of firms

Initial sample 100

Financial firms 16
Missing firms 6
Final sample 78
Duration of study 2010/2017 Table 1.
Total observations 624 Sample selection
JAEE Variables Measure Authors

Tax avoidance (ETR) Tax expense/Pretax income Hanlon and Heitzman (2010), Dyreng
and al. (2008), Goh et al. (2016)
Corporate Social The level of CSR performance measured as Luo et al. (2017), Haniffa and Cooke
responsibility (CSR) the percentage of CSR performance (2005), Newson and Deegan (2002),
disclosures made over the total 39 Mohanadas et al. (2019)
disclosure items
Women directors Is the percentage of women in the board Adhikari et al. (2019), Stainback et al.
(WD) (2016), Tahir et al. (2020), Al-Absy et al.
(2020)
Firm size (Size) Is calculated as a natural logarithm of total Lanis and Richardson (2012), Gupta
assets and Newberry (1997)
Leverage (LEV) is calculated as the ratio of total debt to Gupta and Newberry (1997)
Table 2. total assets
Variables Return on assets is measured as pretax income divided by Mafrolla and D’ Amico (2016),
measurement (ROA) total asset Watson (2015)

context, Rego (2003) argues that ETRs considered as a reasonable measure of effective tax
planning since it takes differences between taxable income and financial accounting income
into account.
Lanis and Richardson (2012) argue that ETR measures the ability of a company to reduce
its tax payments relative to its pretax income. In addition, Huseynov and Klamm (2012)
employ the measure for tax avoidance in their study of the relationship between some
measures of CSR disclosure and corporate tax avoidance. In addition, according to
Aronmwan and Okaiwele (2020), tax expense is usually a combination of both current and
deferred tax liability. Current tax is the portion of tax payable by applying the current tax
rate on the profit for the year, while deferred tax is the portion of tax expenses resulting from
the temporal timing difference (the difference between the carrying amount and tax base of an
asset/liability).
In this study, following previous studies (Dyreng et al., 2008; Goh et al., 2016; Mohanadas
et al., 2019), we calculate the annual ETR, which firms are required to disclose in their
financial statements. The ETR defined as the ratio of total tax expense to pretax income for a
given firm:
Tax Expenceit
ETRit ¼ (1)
Pretax Incomeit

In Malaysia, while there is dearth of studies on corporate tax avoidance, studies like Salihu
et al. (2014), Kasim and Saad (2019) have utilized the ETR to measure the corporate tax
avoidance.
5.2.2 Independent variables. 5.2.2.1 Women directors. Different authors have measured
women directors in a variety of ways (Adams and Ferreira, 2009; Tahir et al., 2020; Al-Absy
et al., 2020). In this study, we measure women directors by the percentage of women in the
board (Adhikari et al., 2019; Stainback et al., 2016). This variable draws on the critical mass
theory developed by Granovetter (1978) and empirical evidence on it like Torchia et al. (2011),
which suggests that the ability to form alliances and coalitions should give women more
power to pursue their preferences.
5.2.2.2 Corporate social responsibility performance. This study measures
CSR performance using the CSR disclosures in annual reports. Data concerning CSR
performance collected from Thomson Reuters–ASSET 4. ASSET 4, a Thomson Reuters
business, provides objective and systematic environmental, social and governance The
information to professional investors who are interested in integrating social responsibility moderating
features into their investment decisions. KLD score does not provide the aggregate measure
for all dimensions. That is why a large body of studies (Salhi et al., 2019; Kachouri et al., 2020)
effect of women
used scores given by the Thomson Reuters ASSET4 ESG database. directors
Consistent with previous studies (Haniffa and Cooke, 2005; Newson and Deegan, 2002;
Ghazali, 2007; Gamerschlag et al., 2011; Mallin et al., 2014; Mohanadas et al., 2019), our paper
develops a CSR performance disclosure index based on the indices used by prior studies to
measure composite CSR performance score. In fact, the content analysis method used where
the company’s annual report is examined, and the extent of CSR information disclosed then
codified into predefined categories. An information item considered as CSR disclosure if it is
related to one or more of the four CSR dimensions: community-related CSR performance,
environment-related CSR performance, marketplace CSR performance and workplace-related
CSR performance. Each CSR dimension divided into multiple items of CSR practices. This
study gives 1 point for each CSR performance disclosed according to its index and 0 points
otherwise. The level of CSR performance, then measured as the percentage of CSR
performance disclosures made over the total 39 disclosure items. In this study, our models
include the three factors provided by Thomson Reuters ESG scores: environmental
(environmental score), social (social score) and corporate governance (CG score). The scores
are measured on a scale from zero to 100 with high scores indicating high levels of CSR
(Zeng, 2021).
5.2.3 Control variables. 5.2.3.1 Firm size. Lanis and Richardson (2012) find that firm having
larger size would be more aggressive in its tax policy rather than small firms. Furthermore,
Gupta and Newberry (1997) argue that in some cases size affects the tax avoidance.
Therefore, we take size (SIZE) as a control variable in our analysis, measured by the log of
total assets.
5.2.3.2 Leverage (LEV). Lanis and Richardson (2012), Stickney and McGee (1982), used
LEV as a control variable. They found that firms having debts would be more aggressive in
gaining an opportunity to apply tax reduction as consequence of interest payment (Sari and
Tjen, 2017). Hanlon and Heitzman (2010) point out that most interest for researchers is in
intentional activities that are more aggressive in avoiding taxes.
LEV is measured by total debts divided by total assets (Gupta and Newberry, 1997; Lanis
and Richardson, 2012).
5.2.3.3 Return on assets (ROA). is measured as pretax income divided by total asset
(Mafrolla and D’Amico, 2016). Companies engage in tax avoidance to improve performance.
In order to control for overall performance, we include ROA.

5.3 Model and estimation method

To test my hypothesis, we estimate this model as described below.
ETRit ¼ β0 þ β1 CSRsit þβ2 SI Z E it þ β3 LEV it þ β4 ROAit
(Model 1)
þ yearf ixedef f ect it þ f irmf ixedef f ect it þ εit

Equation (1) allows the estimation of the main effects of CSR. According to Hypothesis 1 we
expect that β1 is positive in Model (1). To examine the proposed hypothesis, that the impact of
CSR on the corporate tax avoidance is more important in firms with a higher percentage of
females on the top management team. We estimate equation, which includes woman
executive and we expect that β3 (WE*CSR) is positive in Model (2). According to Hypothesis
2, we estimate the Model (2) as described below:
JAEE ETRit ¼ β0 þ β1 CSRsit þ β2 W Dit þ β3 CSR * W Dit þ β4SI Z E it þ β5 LEV it
(Model 2)
þ β6 ROAit þ yearf ixedef f ect it þ f irmf ixedef f ect it þ εit

We include year fixed effect in our models because these variables help to control for
variables that are constant across entities, but vary over time done by including time fixed
effects. This model eliminates omitted variable bias caused by excluding unobserved
variables that evolve over time but are constant across entities. In some applications, it is
meaningful to include both entity and time fixed effects. The combined model allows
eliminating bias from unobservable, that change over time, but are constant over entities and
its controls for factors that differ across entities but are constant over time.
Using F-test, Breusch-Pagan test and Hausman-test, we test the validity of the
fixed effects estimator. The result shows that the Hausman test rejects the random
effects estimator and thus fixed effect models are preferred in the paper. Then, residual
test for normality, autocorrelation and homoscedasticity to ensure that the robustness of
the errors are independent, identically and normally distributed for the fixed
effects model.
The study uses ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with Stata 13 to investigate the
moderating effect of women executive on the relation between CSR and tax avoidance.

6. Empirical results
6.1 Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis
Table 3 presents descriptive statistics of all the variables. As can be seen from this table, the
variable women directors (WD) have a mean of 19.13. This result indicates that 19.13 presents
the percentage of women in the board in our sample. This is higher than the number given in,
for instance, Adams and Ferreira (2009), who reported a value of 8.5%. This is probably
because our sample more recent, 2010–2017, compared to 1996–2003 for Adams and
Ferreira (2009).
The variable ETR mean is 21.621% [1], which is lower than the statutory tax rate of
25%. It implies that the companies, on average, have been taxed aggressively by paying or
accruing lesser tax than the legal requirement. The minimum is zero and the maximum is
68.111 this indicates that there are companies, which have not paid or incurred any tax
even as some have at rates higher than the statutory requirement. Therefore, ETR is
widely dispersed (standard deviation 5 8.815%). Regarding the CSR performance, the
means of CSR performance disclosures are 39.235. Notably close to the study of
Mohanadas et al. (2019) who has found that the mean of CSR performance in Malaysia
firms in 29.595.

Variables Median Mean Min Max SD

CSR 40.785 39.235 0 56.114 45.072

WD 20.58 19.13 0 54.21 14.754
ETR 20.124 21.621 0 68.111 8.815
LEV 0.225 0.227 0.010 0.741 0.157
SIZE 8.221 8.788 7.331 10.662 0.541
ROA 1.815 1.887 0.600 0.863 0.022
Note(s): ETR: Effective Tax Rate; CSR: corporate social responsibility score; WD: women directors: the
Table 3. percentage of women in board; SIZE: is calculated as a natural logarithm of total assets; LEV: is calculated as
Descriptive statistics the ratio of total debt to total assets; ROA: is measured as pretax income divided by total asset
6.2 Correlation analysis The
Table 4 reports the correlations among the variables. As a rule of thumb, a correlation of 0.70 moderating
or higher in absolute value may indicate a multicollinearity issue (Zhang et al., 2020). The
results show that the highest correlation coefficient of 0.322 appears between CSR and SIZE.
effect of women
There is no multicollinearity problem as no correlation coefficients are greater than 0.70. directors
Multicollinearity was also, checked by calculating the variance inflation factors (VIF). The
highest observed VIF value in the study variables is 1.98, which is well below the
conventional cutoff of 10.0.

6.3 Results and discussion

Table 5 shows the results of estimating the Model (1) to test our hypothesis. Although CSR
and tax avoidance (ETR) showed positive association, the association was statistically
significant (β1 5 0.213, Z 5 6.25). The results of this study indicate that firms with better CSR
performance is related to a higher extent of ETR. This study confirms that a higher CSR
rating is related to a lower extent of corporate tax avoidance. Based on these results, we have
to confirm the first hypothesis, which states that the level of CSR negatively related to
corporate tax avoidance.

CSR WD ETR SIZE LEV ROA VIF

CSR 1.000 1.26

WD 0.125** 1.000 1.98
ETR 0.141** 0.145 1.000 1.32
SIZE 0.322*** 0.115** 0.235* 1.000 1.66
LEV 0.622 0.025** 0.052** 0.042 1.000 1.87
ROA 0.142** 0.174** 0.258 0.077 0.067 1.000 1.55
Note(s): ETR: Effective Tax Rate; CSR: corporate social responsibility score; WD: women directors: the
percentage of women in board; SIZE: is calculated as a natural logarithm of total assets; LEV: is calculated as Table 4.
the ratio of total debt to total assets; ROA: is measured as pretax income divided by total asset Pearson correlations
*, **, *** indicate significance at the 0.10, 0.05 and 0.01 levels respectively for independent
a
The use of the Pearson correlation matrix is justified by checking the normality of variables. In fact, we use the variables in Malaysian
skewness and kurtosis test and we find that these variables are normally distributed firmsa

ETR ETR
Model 1 Model 2

Constant 0.151(7.12)*** 0.125(3.15)***

CSR 0.213(6.25)*** 0.178(8.22)***
WD 0.124(7.27)***
CSR*WD 0.025(5.88)***
SIZE 0.057 (2.01)** 0.112 (5.147)***
LEV 0.114 (5.25)*** 0.234(3.14)***
**
ROA 0.147(2.10) 0.557(6.44)***
Firm fixed effects Yes Yes
Year fixed effects Yes Yes
R2 0.5154 0.5823
N-obs 624 624
Note(s): ETR: Effective Tax Rate; CSR: corporate social responsibility score; WD: women directors: the
percentage of women in the board; SIZE: is calculated as a natural logarithm of total assets; LEV: is calculated Table 5.
as the ratio of total debt to total assets; ROA: is measured as pretax income divided by total asset Results of regression
*, **, *** indicate significance at the 0.10, 0.05 and 0.01 levels, respectively analysis
JAEE These findings further support the idea of to those of Lanis and Richardson (2012), Hoi et al.
(2013) and Watson (2015) who all found that socially irresponsible activities (concerns) are
negatively associated with cash ETRs. In other terms, they find that better CSR performance
is related to a lower extent of tax avoidance. In fact, Hoi et al. (2013) look at a sample of about
2,500 US firms and employ a variety of indices of tax avoidance and a composite CSR
indicator. They consistently find that firm, which score lower on the CSR indicator, is more
likely to avoid taxes. In addition, in the Malaysian context, the results support the study of
Karundeng et al. (2020) who show that CSR has a stronger influence on decreasing tax
avoidance if large companies carry out CSR. In the same context, Ortas and Gallego-Alvarez

(2020) find a negative relationship between CSR and corporate tax avoidance. This illustrates
that although CSR is a form of responsibility to all stakeholders where tax is a form of CSR to
stakeholders through the government. Therefore, the implementation of CSR is an effort by
the company to be able to benefit its stakeholders (Dewi and Gunawan, 2019). Stakeholder
theory would thus argue a negative relationship between CSR engagement and tax
avoidance.
The findings of the current study are opposite of Davis et al. (2016) who find that CSR
is negatively related to five-year cash ETRs. Based on a sample of 3,304 observations
between 2002 and 2014, Renselaar (2016) find that the CSR score of companies is
negatively related to their ETR. In fact, Watson (2015) shows that a lack of social
responsibility is positively associated with tax avoidance in firms with low current or
future earnings performance, but this effect is diminished when current or future
earnings performance is high.
The control variable LEV significantly related with ETR. This relation is negative and
significant at the 1% level, which indicates that companies that take on more debt have a
lower ETR. In this model, ETR is also significantly related to ROA (positive at the 5% level).
The results reported in Table 5 document the relation among tax avoidance, CSR and
women directors. The statistically significant coefficient estimate on ETR indicates that CSR
is positively associated with ETRs in firms with high percentage of women directors. In firms
with high level of women, in the board, the effect of CSR is significantly and positively in a
test of the sum of the coefficient estimates on the ETR and CSR*WD (sum of coefficient
estimates 5 0.025; Z 5 5.88). These findings further support the idea of to those of Hoseini
et al. (2019), Jarboui et al. (2020), Luxmawati and Prihantini (2020) who show that the level of
tax avoidance decreases when the level of women on the board increase.
There are several possible explanations for this result. Female in the board is less
tolerant of unethical opportunistic behavior and more active and better monitors than the
male counterparts; they can enhance boards’ total monitoring abilities and effectiveness
(Luo et al., 2017). Indeed, these ethical practices make women more sensitive to CSR and
environmental issues (Nielsen and Huse, 2010). Precisely, a woman on the board increases
the engagement of a firm CSR practices, improving reputation and reducing the costs
associated with the engagement in a tax strategy. In fact, female directors have different
way of perceptions, thinking and ideas that could affect companies’ sustainability
initiatives and reporting (Bakar et al., 2019). Yusof et al. (2019) reveals that the impact of
board diversity gives positive relationship towards the CSR performance among the
companies. By applying the resource dependency theory, firms depend on external units for
resources and the diverse board has the potential to enhance board effectiveness, as there
will be more pooled resources, and thereby influence performance, in this case, CSR
reporting (Bear et al., 2010). Precisely, gender diversity increases the engagement of a firm
on CSR practices, improving reputation and reducing the costs associated with the
engagement in a tax strategy. Mart
ın-Ugedo et al. (2018) argue that the resource
dependence theory applies to female participation in the top management team, and many
scholars agree that female executives provide a unique advantage to the firms. In fact, the
supply of resources and female participation in the top management team will improve the The
organization’s decision-making capacity. Female executives can provide different views moderating
and perspectives for decision-making as well as generate more alternative and different
solutions to the specific problems because they have different personality traits, such as
effect of women
perception, circumspection and acuteness as compared to male executives (Wu et al., 2017). directors
According to Alazzani et al. (2017), Malaysian female directors may be more concerned
with social issues than environmental issues. Another explanation might be that in
countries (such as Malaysia) that are experiencing higher growth rates in their Gross
Domestic Product (GDP), the female directors are more likely to provide priority to social
needs than to environmental ones.
Taken together, these results suggest that there is an association between CSR, tax
avoidance and women on the board. These results show that CSR is negatively associated
with corporate tax avoidance and women directors accentuate this relationship.
To further support our study, we replace the measurement of women directors such the
percentage of women directors with dummy variables equals 1 if exist a woman on the board
and 0 otherwise. Table 6 shows that the results are similar to those previously reported, as
displayed in Table 5.

7. Robustness test
To check the robustness of our main results, we verify whether the moderating role of women
directors on the relationship between CSR and corporate tax avoidance remains intact if we
replace the ETR with the differential ETR (DETR) that is measured by the difference between
the statutory tax rate and the firm’s ETR. Following Hanlon and Heitzman (2010), we
re-estimate regressions (1) and (2) in Malaysian firms using the differential ETR (DETR) as a
proxy for the tax avoidance. Table 7 shows that the results are similar to those previously
reported, as displayed in Table 5.
In the same context, we verify whether the moderating role of women directors in the
relationship between tax avoidance and CSR remains intact, if we replace the measurement of
women directors such the percentage of women in the board with dummy variables equals 1
if exist a woman on the board and 0 otherwise. Table 8 shows that the results are similar to
those previously reported, as displayed in Table 6.

ETR ETR
Model 1 Model 2

Constant 0.587(7.78)*** 0.154(3.77)***

CSR 0.654(6.64)*** 0.178(8.22)***
WD 0.124(7.27)***
CSR*WD 0.025(5.88)***
SIZE 0.111 (2.05)** 0.154 (5.17)***
LEV 0.156 (5.33)*** 0.263(3.54)***
**
ROA 0.152(2.15) 0.517 (8.52)***
Firm fixed effects Yes Yes
Year fixed effects Yes Yes
R2 0.5542 0.5431
N-obs 624 624
Note(s): ETR: Effective Tax Rate; CSR: corporate social responsibility score; WD: women directors: equals 1 if Table 6.
exist woman in the board and 0 otherwise; SIZE: is calculated as a natural logarithm of total assets; LEV: is Additional test: WD:
calculated as the ratio of total debt to total assets; ROA: is measured as pre-tax income divided by total asset women in the board
*, **, *** indicate significance at the 0.10, 0.05 and 0.01 levels, respectively (dummy variable)
JAEE DETR DETR
Model 1 Model 2

Constant 0.166(5.33)*** 0.117(4.66)***

CSR 0.242(5.84)*** 0.139(4.65)***
WD 0.174(5.34)***
CSR*WD 0.158(7.28)***
SIZE 0.066 (2.03)** 0.187 (6.187)***
LEV 0.287 (5.11)*** 0.542(5.17)***
**
ROA 0.152(2.12) 0.517(5.87)***
Firm fixed effects Yes Yes
Year fixed effects Yes Yes
R2 0.5158 0.5466
N-obs 624 624
Table 7.
Robustness test: tax Note(s): DETR: Differential Effective Tax Rate; CSR: corporate social responsibility score; WD: women
avoidance with directors: the percentage of women in board; SIZE: is calculated as a natural logarithm of total assets; LEV: is
Differential Effective calculated as the ratio of total debt to total assets; ROA: is measured as pretax income divided by total asset
Tax Rate *, **, *** indicate significance at the 0.10, 0.05 and 0.01 levels, respectively

DETR DETR
Model 1 Model 2

Constant 0.174(5.33)*** 0.241(6.57)***

CSR 0.285(5.84)*** 0.461(5.32)***
WD 0.587(5.89)***
CSR*WD 0.174(6.25)***
**
SIZE 0.147 (2.11) 0.258 (6.87)***
LEV 0.362 (4.65)*** 0.654(8.17)***
ROA 0.125(2.10)** 0.2584(8.11)***
Firm fixed effects Yes Yes
Year fixed effects Yes Yes
Table 8. R2 0.5586 0.5871
Robustness test: tax
N-obs 624 624
avoidance with
differential effective Note(s): DETR: Differential Effective Tax Rate; CSR: corporate social responsibility score; WD: equals 1 if
tax rate and WE: exist woman in the board and 0 otherwise; SIZE: is calculated as a natural logarithm of total assets; LEV: is
women in the board calculated as the ratio of total debt to total assets; ROA: is measured as pretax income divided by total asset
(dummy variable) *, **, *** indicate significance at the 0.10, 0.05 and 0.01 levels, respectively

8. Conclusion
The present paper addresses, through an empirical approach, the effect of women directors
on the relation between CSR and corporate tax avoidance, by examining whether and how
female in the board affect the relation between CSR and tax avoidance. It offers scientific
arguments on ‘feminization, not only in the name of female-male equality and organizational
justice, but also in the light of global performance. Transparency, approximated by CSR
disclosure, positively correlated with the feminization in the firms, so this positive
relationship improves the negative effect of CSR on corporate tax avoidance.
The present study makes several theoretical, practical and social implications. Firstly, our
finding helps entrepreneurs, investors and the community to explain a direct relationship
between the influence of responsibility for the corporate decision-making process and the tax
strategy adopted, as well as for a firm’s transparency. Exactly, the position of a woman in the
firm could allow a firm to reduce the reputational cost related to the engagement of corporate The
tax avoidance by accurately disclosing CSR activity. This allows a company to take a moderating
multistakeholder approach to developing corporate relationships with internal and external
stakeholders. In fact, internal stakeholders are interested to know financial the strategies,
effect of women
taxation adopted such as tax avoidance. External stakeholders are interested in CSR, directors
corporate activities and the firm’s tax strategies assigned with its commercial interests.
Secondly, our findings suggest that the incorporation of women in firm’s decision-making
process leads firm to plan ethical strategy, taking into account the interests of several groups
of stakeholders. For this reason, policymakers and governments of the major countries have
to advance the integration of women in corporate decision-making. On the social implication,
this study shows the value of considering the institutional setting in the transparency of
information research. There is anecdotal evidence claiming the pivotal role of CSR and
Sustainability performance (SP) toward the reduction of corporate tax avoidance in the
progressive dynamic market. The results of this study represent the effectiveness of CSR for
decreasing the tax avoidance through board gender diversity. The findings may be of interest
to the academic researchers, practitioners and regulators who are interested in discovering
the relation between CSR and tax avoidance with presence of women on the board. We
emphasize the importance of female executives for the engagement of a firm on CSR practices.
This provides useful empirical guidance for the Malaysian policymakers, regulators and
corporate decision makers concerning gender diversity in firms. These results also help them
to realize the importance of female executives for reducing the opportunistic behavior of
managers and make continuous efforts to improve financial reporting quality by identifying
transactional errors in financial statements (Adams and Ferreira, 2009) and, in particular,
become aware of benefit of the presence of female executives to firms. According to our
empirical evidence, when the percentage of women is too high on the board, they act as active
members, influencing the system of rules, procedures and practices. The company tends to
develop higher CSR disclosure and lower tax avoidance value, corroborating the positive
effect of boards “feminization on transparency information. This paper tackled a quite
innovative topic: the relationship between women directors, CSR and tax avoidance,
insufficiently investigated in the gender diversity literature. It offers strategic and
managerial arguments in favor of significant feminization in, the board accentuates the
relation between CSR and corporate tax avoidance. The results provide the important
implication that the association between CSR, gender diversity and corporate tax avoidance
depends on the culture within which the company operates. Our study contributes to the
literature in a number of ways. It adds evidence to the corporate tax avoidance literature by
explaining why some firms engage more in corporate tax avoidance than others do. Until
recently, very few studies have looked at the relationship between corporate social
responsibility and tax avoidance (Islam et al., 2021; Abdullah, 2020). Second, it extends the
dynamic links between corporate social responsibility and corporate tax avoidance. Finally,
important limitations need to be considered is the little control” variables on the empirical
models. This research has thrown up many questions in need of further investigation the
effect of the presence of females on Malaysian firms’ boards of directors on social and
environmental performances. In addition, this study used a sample of nonfinancial listed
companies. It may not be representative of the population of Malaysian firms. Our results
may not be generalizable to smaller companies and different time. In addition, the lack of
systematic CSR measurement for other groups of companies imposes certain limitations on
the generalizability of the findings. Thus, future research could extend the population of this
study by taking into account all the Malaysian listed firms, including the financial companies
and make comparisons across sector results. Furthermore, results are representative only for
listed firms. Future studies could examine the impact of political connection on corporate tax
avoidance.
JAEE Notes
1. Suggesting some level of tax avoidance in our sample, which compares closely to Hoi et al. (2013)
(25.3 percent). Since Hoi et al. (2013) report descriptive statistics of the remainder of their variables in
a larger sample that includes loss firms, they are difficult to compare; however, the proximity of the
ETR descriptive statistics indicates a closely matching sample.

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Corresponding author
Anis Jarboui can be contacted at: anisjarboui@yahoo.fr

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