Investigating the Effect of Female Auditors’ Glass Ceiling Beliefs on Tenure Intentions: The Mediating Variable Role of Psychological Empowerment

The term glass ceiling refers to the invisible artificial barriers formed by attitudinal and organizational prejudices, which prevent women from senior executive positions. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of female auditors’ glass ceiling beliefs on tenure intentions, considering the mediating variable role of psychological Empowerment. This study is a descriptive and correlational study and the statistical population of the study consists of female auditors working in member institutions of the Iranian Association of Certified Public Accountants (IACPA). The information required for this study was collected by completing a questionnaire by 116 female auditors in 1400. In this study, in order to measure the beliefs of the glass ceiling, the constructs of denial, resilience, resignation, and acceptance have been applied, and in order to test the hypotheses, structural equation modeling using the least-squares method has been used. The results of testing the hypotheses using SmartPLS 3 indicated the positive and significant effect of denial and resilience and the negative and significant effect of acceptance on the psychological empowerment of female auditors. The results also showed that the constructs of denial and resilience through the construct of psychological empowerment have an effect on tenure intentions, but the indirect effect of resignation and acceptance on the tenure intentions is not significant. Hence, part of the higher tendency of female auditors to leave auditing firms than male auditors can be attributed to the beliefs of the glass ceiling.