This study examines the relationship between female board representation and financial reporting quality and investigates whether audit quality moderates this relationship among firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. Drawing on agency theory, resource dependence theory, and social role theory, the research addresses the growing emphasis on board gender diversity and the role of external audit in enhancing financial transparency within an emerging-market setting.

Using a panel of 149 non-financial listed firms over the period 2014–2024 , financial reporting quality is measured by the absolute discretionary accruals derived from the Kasznik (1999) model. Female board representation is captured by a binary indicator equal to one if the CEO or at least one board member is female. Audit quality is constructed from three proxies—financial restatements, material internal-control weaknesses, and auditor size—and is used to partition the sample into high- and low-audit-quality subsamples. Fixed-effects panel regressions are estimated.

The results reveal no statistically significant association between female board representation and financial reporting quality. Furthermore, the relationship remains insignificant in both the high- and low-audit-quality subsamples, indicating that audit quality does not moderate the link between female directors and reporting quality.

These findings highlight the limited substantive influence of female board presence in a context characterized by low gender diversity, concentrated ownership, and relatively homogeneous audit practices. The study contributes to the corporate governance literature by providing evidence from an under-researched emerging market and underscores that improvements in financial reporting quality require more than symbolic board diversity or conventional audit-quality enhancements.