Gender (in) Accounting: Insights, Gaps and an Agenda for Future Research

The proportion of women attending universities have increased over the last few decades. Women generally work harder at their studies and achieve higher grades than their male counterparts. In accounting studies, there are now more women than men. However, there are more male professors and heads/chairs of departments of accounting than women professors and heads/chairs. How is this possible? There are two possible explanations, namely these are positions that women are not interested in, or they are being excluded. The first explanation seems unlikely. The second explanation can be divided into excluded because of inferior performance, or excluded because of bias. Again, the first reason does not make much sense. If female accounting students outperform their male counterparts, why should the same not be true for professors? This brings us to the crux of the matter, bias. Bias continue to be operationalised in crass ways, but these forms of bias can be identified and dealt with much more easily than the subtle insidious ways of the world. Women’s behaviour at work is often characterised in negative ways, whereas equivalent male behaviour is attributed to positive motives. Women are characterised as bitchy and temperamental and therefore found to be unsuitable for higher positions, whereas males are often promoted because they are aggressive and passionate about the business. This special issue aims to highlight the iniquities and foster debate and further research into gender issues, and particularly into gender in accounting, and gender accounting. We build on previous special issues published in Accounting, Organizations and Society (1987, Vol. 12 (1)); Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (1992, Vol. 5 (3)); Accounting, Organizations and Society (1992, Vol. 17 (3/4)); Critical Perspectives on Accounting (1998, Vol. 9 (3)); Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (2008, Vol. 21 (4)); and Critical Perspectives on Accounting (2016, Vol. 35 (March)).