Social Responsibility of Statutory Auditors

This chapter discusses social responsibility taking into account the role of women as statutory auditors. Indeed, auditors are expected to confirm whether the financial statements are true and fair and, in accordance with the law, adopt a responsible attitude to the society. Methodologically, this research relied on a two-track approach. The first takes the form of an editorial review and argument which allows the authors to explore social responsibility literature along with implications for the role of women as statutory auditors. The second takes the form of a field research based on an exploratory longitudinal analysis, over the period 1973–2013, and support of the legal regime of Portugal, with public available sources of statistics and reports relating to the statutory auditors. The authors provided a glimpse of the role of women in this profession and, in the last years, the results show a weak increase of women on the statutory audit exercise.