Women in Charge: Gendered Governance Linked to Cleaner Museum Finances in Norway

A new study of Norwegian museum foundations has found that the gender of the people who run these cultural institutions is measurably associated with the quality of their financial statements. Researchers at Oslo Metropolitan University examined 84 museum foundations over the years 2021 to 2023 and discovered that foundations with more women on their boards, longer-serving female directors, and female external auditors produce financial reports with fewer accounting irregularities. The findings, published in the European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy, offer some of the first quantitative evidence that gender diversity in nonprofit governance may translate into more trustworthy financial reporting in the cultural sector.

The research team, led by Forohar Mansori, Christophe Van Linden, and Anna Kania Widiatami, set out to answer a question that had never been formally tested for museums: does the presence of women in governance positions correlate with better financial outcomes? While prior studies in the for-profit sector have linked female directors and auditors to reduced earnings management and improved reporting quality, no one had extended this line of inquiry to nonprofit cultural organizations. Museum foundations occupy a unique position, tasked with preserving cultural heritage and engaging the public while relying heavily on governance structures to maintain financial stability and accountability.

The theoretical foundation for the study draws on psychology and management literature. Cross-cultural research has shown that women report higher levels of dutifulness than men, a trait that is particularly relevant for governance actors charged with fulfilling their responsibilities effectively. Studies of corporate boards have found that female directors tend to be more benevolent, more universally concerned, and less power-oriented than their male counterparts. Accounting research further suggests that gender diversity on boards can enhance decision-making by incorporating a wider range of perspectives and strengthening board oversight, mechanisms that plausibly extend to the quality of financial statements a museum ultimately publishes.

Norway provides an especially interesting setting for this research. The country was the first in the world to implement a mandatory gender quota for boards of directors of listed companies, requiring at least 40 percent female representation. The quota was introduced voluntarily in 2003 and became mandatory in 2006, with liquidation as the penalty for non-compliance. As of 2024, the quota also applies to certain private foundations and companies based on size thresholds. Although most Norwegian museum foundations were not yet subject to the mandatory quota during the study period, the country’s pioneering stance created a best-practice culture that other organizations, including museums, aspired to emulate.

To conduct the analysis, the researchers manually collected governance data from Norway’s Register of Company Accounts for 2021, 2022, and 2023, identifying all museum foundations with at least one employee that were subject to external audit. After filtering out entities without employees, non-foundation legal forms, and a small number of unusable observations, the final sample comprised 252 foundation-year observations across 84 unique institutions. Financial data came from the Norwegian database Proff Forvalt, and the team measured financial reporting quality using abnormal working capital accruals scaled by total assets, a standard accounting metric where lower values indicate more reliable and error-free reporting.

The results were striking. Approximately half of the museum foundations in the sample had a female director, boards were on average 46 percent female, and about one third were audited by women. In the multivariate regression analysis, the proportion of women on museum boards was significantly and negatively associated with abnormal accruals, meaning that foundations with more female board members exhibited higher financial reporting quality. Similarly, museums audited by female external auditors showed significantly lower abnormal accruals than those audited by men, confirming the third hypothesis of the study.

The relationship between director gender and reporting quality proved more nuanced. A female museum director alone did not produce a statistically significant improvement in financial reporting quality. However, when the researchers interacted director gender with tenure, a clear pattern emerged: female directors with fewer than three years in the role were actually associated with lower reporting quality, while female directors with tenure exceeding three years were strongly associated with higher quality. This finding aligns with prior research on Norway’s corporate gender quota, which documented a temporary decline in reporting quality immediately after quota implementation, attributed to the relative inexperience of newly appointed female directors.

The authors are careful to note that their research design captures associations rather than causation. It remains possible that museum foundations with inherently higher financial reporting quality are more attractive to female governance actors, rather than the reverse. An instrumental variable approach would be needed to establish causal direction, and the researchers welcome future work along those lines. They also acknowledge that gender is only one dimension of diversity, and that other characteristics such as race, age, and their intersectionality may also influence governance outcomes in cultural organizations.

Despite these limitations, the study makes a meaningful contribution to ongoing discussions about diversity in the museum sector and connects directly to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly the gender equality goal that envisions removing legal, social, and economic barriers to women’s empowerment. The researchers emphasize that organizations should pursue substantive change rather than merely increasing visible diversity, which risks tokenism. Diverse directors must have genuine opportunities to influence decision-making, and diversity improvements should occur across all organizational levels, not just among governance actors.

For museum leaders, policymakers, and the broader cultural sector, the message is clear: the composition of governance teams matters for financial accountability. As museums worldwide grapple with funding pressures, public scrutiny, and demands for transparency, the Norwegian evidence suggests that bringing more women into boardrooms, directorships, and audit roles may be associated with cleaner, more reliable financial reporting. Whether these findings generalize beyond Norway’s unique gender-equality culture remains an open question, but the study provides a compelling empirical foundation for future research on governance diversity in nonprofit cultural institutions around the world.

Subject of Research: The association between gender composition of governance roles and financial reporting quality in Norwegian museum foundations

Article Title: Gendered governance and financial reporting quality: evidence from Norwegian museum foundations

Article References: Mansori, F., Van Linden, C., & Widiatami, A. K. (2026). Gendered governance and financial reporting quality: evidence from Norwegian museum foundations. European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy, 15, Article 14701. https://doi.org/10.3389/ejcmp.2025.14701

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/ejcmp.2025.14701

Keywords: gender diversity, museum governance, financial reporting quality, Norway, nonprofit sector, board composition, female auditors, abnormal accruals, cultural management, sustainable development goals, Gendered, governance