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Despite the significant increase in the number of women in accounting research over past decades, the percentage of female full professors in accounting is still low. One of the problems may relate to the research area(s) they choose to specialize in. Is the relatively slow promotion of women due to their decision to concentrate in 'nonmainstream' fields of research? In this study, we collect data on 1,042 male and female accounting academics. Using the research interests declared on each academic web page, we find that accounting researchers show no significant gender differences in their choice of research fields. Hence, we conclude that the underpromotion of women cannot be attributed to their choice of 'nonmainstream' fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the current literature on gender, modernity, patriarchy and accounting by bringing insights into the experiences of women accountants in Syria: an Arab and predominantly Muslim country. By doing so, this paper enhances understanding of women's interrelationship with accounting beyond the Anglo-American context that currently dominates the research agenda on gender and accounting. Face-to-face interviews with 20 women accountants were carried out in Syria in 2008. This study reveals that in the context of global capitalism and patriarchy, factors of class, alienation, tradition and economic difficulties are contributing to the subordinated role of women in society in general and in the accounting profession in particular. The increased commercialisation of the accounting profession in the Arab world, including Syria, has resulted in socio-economic hierarchies and discriminatory practices, where interviewees spoke of discrimination based on class, sex and on the knowledge held. Further, despite advances to Syrian women's access to the public space, the public space for Syrian women accountants often operates based largely on how men act in this space. Men (and socially/financially advantaged women) often occupy aspects of the public (accounting) space that are perceived to be more significant and better financially rewarded. Thus, the dichotomy of public/private spaces in this study is understood in a broader sense to incorporate the symbolic as well as spatial aspects. This paper concludes that the accounting profession's aspirations need to be challenged through critically evaluating and redefining work roles and values to ensure emancipation for women. Furthermore, in the Arab world, dominant patriarchal structures will only be challenged and changed when obstacles preventing women from enjoying their human rights and contributing fully in society are addressed and eliminated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose – This paper aims to highlight differences in women's experiences of advancement to partnership in accountancy firms in Germany and the UK and consider the ways in which such differences may be constituted by the institutional context in which they occurred. Design/methodology/approach – This research is based on 60 semi-structured interviews with women partners in Germany and the UK. Techniques adopted from grounded theory were applied. Research limitations/implications – This qualitative research is context-specific and given its cross-national, interdisciplinary nature is limited to the extent that findings cannot be generalised beyond the studied scope. Practical implications – The study points to cross-national differences in women's career advancement in accountancy firms. The findings support extant research suggesting that structured performance evaluation and hiring systems – while not without flaws – are likely more gender-neutral. In addition, the study highlights the potential of headhunters and recruitment agents as an important tool for women to navigate their way out of career culs-de-sac. Originality/value – This research provides unique insights into women partners' experiences of career advancement and, through its interdisciplinary nature, demonstrates the usefulness of employing institutional frameworks in qualitative in-depth studies of this kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we provide an oral history of women who worked as accountants in Australia during World War II. We use Bourdieu’s theory of practice to identify the accounting profession as a hierarchical field, where relative positions are defined in terms of associated cultural, social and symbolic capital. Women were historically excluded from the profession as they lacked the requisite capital. However, the shortage of male accountants during World War II led to women being employed in otherwise male-dominated positions. We find that women responded positively to this opportunity and challenged the general belief that they were unsuited to accounting work. Furthermore, women received support from male accountants with whom they worked. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigated the relationship of career anchors and work-related barriers to career progression for female CPA members working in the New South Wales (NSW) and Western Australian (WA) state public sector. Results of regression analysis found technical functional competence, managerial competence, security and pure challenge career anchors to be significant and related to career progression in WA. Additionally the security and lifestyle career anchors were significant in NSW. Work-related barriers were found to be significant and negatively related to career progression. These findings suggest alternative strategies to improve career outcomes for women working in the state public sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses the concept of risk avoidance to analyze responses from in-depth interviews with a group of women lawyers and accountants about their employment decision-making in order to provide a deeper understanding of why and how some women come to choose government employment over private-sector employment. An analysis of interviews reveals that some women perceived work-family conflict, economic precariousness, and fewer protections against employers' arbitrary decision-making as potential risks associated with private-sector employment. To reduce these risks, some women "chose" to work in government rather than in the private sector. This study contributes to existing literature by identifying risk avoidance in employment decision-making as a response to work-family conflict and social class constraints and by illustrating why and how this risk avoidance occurs among some women in elite white-collar professions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Men and women are now being admitted to membership of the major UK professional accountancy bodies in approximately equal numbers. This trend has focused attention on the ways in which professional accountants combine careers and family life, particularly when women have children. Recognising the limitations inherent in the widely-used term "work-life balance" that polarises life and work, this paper instead seeks to consider the "work-lifestyle choices" made by female accountants. Work-lifestyle choices refer to the ways in which people place different emphases on the work and private spheres, according to their individual circumstances. Feminist researchers have argued that women's work-lifestyle choices have been limited by structural constraints. Over the past decade, a newer argument, preference theory, has emerged, suggesting that women's choices owe less to inequalities in the workplace and more to the preferences of individuals, particularly, but not exclusively, women. The purpose of this paper is to explore the work-lifestyle choices made by female members of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), in terms of both structural constraints and preferences, in order to present a more holistic understanding of the work-lifestyle choices made by this particular group of well-educated, middle-class women. Design/methodology/approach – The paper combines feminist theory and preference theory in the context of the results of a questionnaire survey of female members of ICAS and 14 interviews with female members of ICAS. Findings – The responses of these accountants suggest that, while structural constraints are evident, many work-lifestyle choices were driven by a desire to spend more time with children, and by women's perceptions of their mothering role. Most women, while recognising the opportunities forgone, were nonetheless happy with the choices that they had made. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the literature by examining the voices of female accountants in order to explore how perceived gender roles impact on career decisions and work-lifestyle choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We write with a voice of the marginalised in mind, as both marginalised women scholars writing from a critical perspective on human organisation and as privileged human beings with concern for those more dangerously excluded from The Master's House. The voice we raise does not plead for assimilation into circumstances as they are. It calls for radical change. Our ideas originate in research with Māori women accountants employed in organisations expressing commitment to Māori involvement. From that research we learned that aspiring to bicultural ways of being in a context prematurely deemed post-colonial is fraught with risks of co-option and unintentional collusion. Accordingly we are committed to further exposing neo-colonialism and to experiment with The Subaltern Voice (TSV) as a heuristic for this work. Asking what might be said in TSV that is different from what can be said in more commonly heard voices calling for inclusion has brought us to new thoughts about our own engagement with 'The Empire'. Not only as it continues to colonise Maori locally and indigenous peoples globally, but from the myriad of places we take our positions to speak, sometimes 'from the margins' and other times from within the relative comforts of The Master's House. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an exploration of the involvement of women in the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants of throughout its 100 year history. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on archival analysis of professional journal and yearbooks of the New Zealand Institute, as well as the minutes of the Institute, and those of its predecessors (the Accountants' and Auditors' Association and the Incorporated Institute of New Zealand.) Findings – Social stereotyping appears to have influenced women's membership and participation in the accounting profession in New Zealand. Although the number of women in accounting has risen dramatically since the 1980s, and women now have a more prominent role in the profession, they have still not gained equality with their male colleagues. Originality/value – Research on women in accounting, both in New Zealand and overseas, has tended to focus on women in public accounting (Trapp et al., 1989; Lehman, 1992; Gammie and Gammie, 1995; Whiting and Wright, 2001). This paper contributes new knowledge about the contributions that women have made to their professional associations and how those organizations responded to their women members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose — This paper seeks to suggest that the typical western workplace culture, especially in the accounting profession, is predicated on a masculine, emotion-free template, and that this poses specific challenges and difficulties for women. Design/methodology/approach — The paper is based on conceptual claims and secondary data from studies of emotion, work and gender. Findings — It was found that female accountants may have to make some difficult choices in the workplace due to their socialization as being more emotionally aware and attuned than men. Originality/value — The paper underlines the importance of the emotion-work link in accounting, and how it relates to gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- This paper aims to make an assessment of the contribution made by accounting histories of women produced since 1992 and the current state of knowledge production in this subject area. Design/methodology/approach -- The study is based on a review of published sources on accounting history and women's, gender and feminist history. Findings -- Whereas feminist historians and historians of gender boast substantial advances in research and transformative impacts on the wider discipline of history, similar momentum is less evident in accounting history. It is argued that over the past 15 years scholarship has remained substantially in the "recovery" phase, has not "defamiliarized" the sub-field and is yet to engage with developments in feminist and gender historiography which offer regenerative potential. Research limitations/implications -- The paper argues that sex and gender differentiation persist in both the past and the present and their study should feature large on the accounting history research agenda. Originality/value -- Core themes in feminist and gender history are explored with a view to identifying research questions for accounting historians. These themes include the oppression and subordination of women, the public-private divide, restoring women to history, devising new periodisations, investigating socio-cultural relations, and the construction of identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to engage a different notion of feminism in accounting by addressing the issues of feminism, balance, and integration as a means of understanding differently the world for which one accounts. The ideas are communicated by the sharing of experiences through myth and storytelling. Design/methodology/approach -- An alternative lens for understanding the giving of accounts is proposed, drawing on earlier feminist accounting literature as well as storytelling and myth. Findings -- Including the subjective and intersubjective approaches to experiencing and understanding the world recommends an approach whereby both the feminine-intuitive and the masculine-rational processes are integrated in constructing decision models and accounts. Research limitations/implications -- Through an expanded view of values that can be included in reporting or recounting a different model is seen, and different decisions are enabled. The primary limitation is having to use words to convey one's subjective and intersubjective understandings. The written medium is not the most natural language for such an undertaking. Practical implications -- By enabling the inclusion of more feminine values, a way is opened to engage more holistically with the society in which decisions are embedded. Originality/value -- Drawing on the storytelling tradition, a bolistic model is suggested that can lead to emergence of a more balanced societal reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to open up the Anglo-centred argument in gender and accounting by exploring the relationship of women and accounting in a different social and cultural context. Design/methodology/approach -- The paper draws on in-depth ethnographical studies to explore the real-life experiences of 66 japanese women (9 percent of all women CPAs) who have entered the accounting profession from a range of backgrounds and generations. Findings -- The paper finds that some women accounting professionals in Japan have brought about changes in accounting practice there by applying a uniquely feminine approach in their day-to-day work. Their strict approach is attuned to the ongoing globalization in the field of accountancy, and this has helped to widen the opportunities for women. Research limitations/implications -- This paper demonstrates that, in order to understand the issues surrounding gender and accounting, it is important to consider the prevailing social context and its underpinnings. In the Japanese "interdependent" social context, gender is intertwined in the process of accounting to establish its "independent" status. Practical implications -- It has been argued that the unique social and cultural context in Japan will make it difficult for the country to converge its accounting and auditing with global standards. By incorporating a gender perspective, the paper aims to clarify the social assumptions under which accounting and auditing operate in Japan. Originality/value -- By making a close analysis of the process by which Japanese women have entered the accounting profession, the paper reveals the connection between the growing significance of auditing and the changing role and position of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- Women in public accounting firms are still proportionally much fewer in number in the highest levels of the hierarchy than men, whereas recruitment at junior level tends to be increasingly gender-balanced. This paper aims to analyse the relationships between the glass ceiling and motherhood. The mechanisms explaining the difficulties encountered by auditor mothers in their hierarchical progression within the Big Four in France are identified. Design/methodology/approach -- From 24 interviews with male and female auditors of various hierarchical levels, one seeks to reveal the specificity of the difficulties encountered by auditor mothers. Findings -- It is argued that, throughout their careers, they are confronted with a dilemma that often leads to their being excluded and excluding themselves from the group of "those who may become partners". It is shown that public accounting firms place both implicit and explicit obstacles in their way, fled to a desire to neutralise the effects, deemed costly, of motherhood. Moreover, the expectations of the organisation and society as a whole conflict on many points and confront female auditors with a dilemma: how to be a good mother and have a bright career? It appears that women who want to better manage this dilemma shape working practices imposed on the whole team and implement tactics to adapt their work-life balance (specialisation and lateral move to staff departments). This leads to individual trajectories that break out of the organisational model and account for the scarcity of women in the upper management levels in audit firms. Originality/value -- The paper gives voice to male auditors and shows that managing the professional life/private life dilemma is difficult for fathers as well as mothers, in the long term. Moreover, rather than thinking in terms of horizontal and vertical segregations, this paper invites one to question the concept of the glass ceiling and consider the construction of the scarcity of women in the accounting profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to set out some contextual issues in relation to the achievements of women accountants and academics. Design/methodology/approach -- This is a discussion paper that uses academic and professional experiences as a basis from which to draw out an agenda for further study. Findings -- It is found that, despite changes over the last 30 years, the lived experience of women in accounting and academia is evidence that their academic and professional opportunities are still constrained. Two papers in this special issue offer feminist approaches to enrich study in the area, and it is argued that gender is an element that should be embedded in research in accounting. Research limitations/implications -- This editorial is a selective review and is not intended as a comprehensive review of research in the field. Practical implications -- The paper seeks to re-ignite more research in the field, using a richer range of approaches. Originality/value The paper sets an agenda for research and provides an argument as to why the agenda needs to be pursued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustained policy focus on combating institutional racism at all levels of British society has given new impetus to discovering how racialized groups experience a variety of institutional settings. This article draws on research conducted amongst British Hindu women working as professional accountants to further understand how privileged institutional spaces are racialized. The narratives of the women discussed in this article demonstrate how professional occupations are important in understanding articulations of racial identity in privileged institutional spaces as not only empirically and historically contingent, but also complex, contradictory and ambivalent. The article suggests that although their professional work spaces were racialized, the experiences of the research sample did not seem to indicate that race was an all-determining influence in their career progression. Its influence did not appear to close all avenues for potential change and progression against discriminative employment cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The call for a just social order in Aotearoa (New Zealand) includes the transformation of mono-cultural institutions such as the accountancy profession. Maori women accountants in this research expressed concern about maintaining their identity as Maori while participating in the corporate culture of the firms in which they are employed. These women helped form a Maori accountants' network and special interest groups to support and encourage Maori in the profession. They are working within the organisation and the discipline of accounting to create new knowledge and practice, through which their professional careers as accountants may be enhanced without the diminishing of those values that give life to te ao Maori (a Maori perspective). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although New Zealand was the first country within the Commonwealth to allow women to enter the profession of accountancy on a continuous basis, this did not result in a large number of women becoming professional accountants until the 1990s. This paper focuses on the development of the status of women within the accounting profession in New Zealand. Documents from the early and middle part of this century provide evidence that the accounting profession was almost entirely male in these years. A number of women who joined the New Zealand Society of Accountants in the 1940s and 1950s were interviewed and their testimonies were interpreted using insights gained from the extant literature on gender and the professionalisation of accounting. It was found that, while there were no formal barriers to entry, the obstacles to progression, identified in the literature on other countries, existed within the New Zealand context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Features certified management accountant (CMA) Janet Cosier, the adviser of strategic planning and risk management for the Bank of Canada. Contributions of the CMA designation to her career; Responsibilities of Cosier in the Bank of Canada; Contributions to the Canadian Payments Association as appointed chair as of January 2001; Views on the importance of performance measurement to organizations.

ABSTRACT. This study examined the progress and current situation of academic women accountants and provides information concerning gender-specific employment experiences. Results indicate that gender inequity within accounting academe may still exist. For example, the percentage of female faculty has increased to only 22.3% of the total. Further, the percentage of respondents (n = 188) in the senior ranks (34.3%) is much smaller than the percentage in the junior ranks (64.7%). Additionally, those surveyed were asked to respond to questions concerning their discriminatory experiences with regard to gender, age, and race. The majority of women had encountered gender-related discrimination, and 60% of minorities surveyed cited instances of race-related discrimination. Implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]