Women in accounting: Revolution, where art thou?

Abstract

Goldin hypothesised women’s transition from evolution to revolution, where they claimed increasing dominion over their careers. Such change is salient for the professions such as accounting, where gender inequality persists. This qualitative study reports on how a group of 36 male and female accounting professionals employed by Big Four firms and in academia in New Zealand decided to redefine, disassemble and reconstruct their careers. Gender and role expectations strongly influenced their career pathways. Despite spousal and organisational support, most females in the study retained a flexible focus on career. These decisions were mainly influenced by how they thought about life, work, and career, and relationships with significant others. These results re-confirm traditional career patterns and to an extent, broader traditional gender role expectations in the profession. Acknowledging that inequality in the accounting profession appears entrenched makes it clear that the changes Goldin hypothesised have not yet been fully fulfilled.

Intersections of women’s identities in professional accountancy careers

“…Semistructured interviews are preferred (Cooke and Xiao, 2014;Kamla, 2014;Adapa et al, 2016;Ashley and Empson, 2016;Castro and Holvino, 2016). Half of them were conducted with men and women to provide a basis for reasonable comparison (Anderson-Gough et al, 2005;Dambrin and Lambert, 2008;Lupu, 2012;Vidwans and Cohen, 2020;Sian et al, 2020). In addition, are used nonparticipative observation (Kokot, 2014;Bitbol-Saba and Dambrin, 2019), documentary case studies (Grey, 1998), surveys and questionnaires (Anderson et al, 1994;Gallhofer et al, 2011;Gammie and Whiting, 2013;Flynn et al, 2015) and documentary analyses involving multiple data sources (Ciancanelli, 1990;Edgley, 2016;Kyriacou, 2016).…”

“…It is thus rational to economize the efforts they invest in employment (Crompton and Harris, 1998). Between these two categories of women are those with a flexible focus on career and family (Vidwans and Cohen, 2020). These women balance work and life, although they may not be as devoted to their careers, and their goals may be impacted by their partners’ work and lifestyle choices (Smith et al , 2016).…”

“…Less than ten papers are identified with an intersectional explicitly approach to analyze gender inequalities in the accounting profession (Castro, 2012; Whiting, 2012; Castro and Holvino, 2016; Hayes and Jacobs, 2017; Adapa et al , 2016; Vidwans and Du Plessis, 2019; Sadler and Wessels, 2019; Vidwans and Cohen, 2020).…”

“…This approach necessitates a shift in the company’s perspective toward evaluating employees’ success based on their delivery and achievements rather than time spent in the workplace, with advantages for working parents and those caring for elderly or disabled family members. Further, promoting a clear compensation framework that includes transparent salary levels and ranges within organizations allows employees to set realistic salary expectations (Vidwans and Cohen, 2020).…”

“…The decision to quit a job depends upon a person’s needs (Barker and Monks, 1998). Limited choices remain after one leaves the job – for example, becoming self-employed, opening a new business venture, retiring or shifting to academia (Vidwans and Cohen, 2020). This last option would involve more work; a woman would need to get a PhD, publish papers, do extensive research and work long hours that, in most cases, would include teaching hours.…”