The 2015 Global Internal Audit Common Body of Knowledge (CBOK) Practitioner Survey reveals that women make up a large portion of the internal audit profession around the world. Nevertheless, women are faced with considerable challenges as they circumnavigate through their careers in internal auditing. CBOK is the world’s most thorough and rolling study of the internal audit profession. It also analyses the makeup of the internal audit profession and incorporates the studies of internal audit practitioners and their stakeholders. During the 2015 CBOK survey, more than 5,400 women took part in roundtable discussions and responses to questionnaires. This represents 38% of total responses.
2. Why the concern about women internal auditors?
It is important to create conditions favourable for women to acquire skills, grow, and contribute to economic prosperity with various vocations including that of IA. Just like men, women need to generate income, access basic services, and look after their families. Empowerment of women is key to enabling them to achieve this. They need to be given the same opportunities as men.
Writing with his counterparts, Stephen Bear argues that women in internal audit leadership positions and boards improve a firm’s reputation, resulting in highly rated corporate social responsibility. On the other hand, Amy Hillman, proposes that such women must possess professional experience which improves the performances of organisations that they work for. A somewhat controversial assertion is that female executives tend to possess better transformational leadership qualities than their male counterparts[1]. Additionally, they possess leadership qualities that make females more cooperative towards their subordinates and improve earnings quality.[2] Female managers and professionals tend to be agents of change, provide competitive platforms to change traditional policies, develop robust monitoring
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