GENDER BIASES IN ACCOUNTING
The current world we are living in there is so much of changes that are occurring bin the society in terms of gender representation in the job market. The development in the present job market allows most of the men and women to participate. With the women empowerment programs most of the women globally are revolutionizing from being illiterate and being house wives but rather they are now educated and also moving out of their homes for jobs. The changes are also evident as the traditional women from the earlier days had beliefs that some of these jobs could only be carried out by men but nowadays they are engaging in jobs across the job market in the world. With the freedom that these women are having they are able to choose their career paths and are able to exploits in their line of work. Accountancy is a specific job market which has also adhered to these changes in the gender issue. This is evident as the report that was given in the journal of accountancy in the year 1915,’ “there are only some 500 female certified public accountants” (accounting WED). However this has changed over the years as half of the accountants in the present day are women. Women have worked so hard to occupy the accountants’ positions all over the world. However it is so unfortunate that some of the employers in the job market are yet in the earlier era and this has attributed to gender bias. Gender bias is evident and so much alive in the job market today. This paper therefore will basically base its argument on gender bias in terms of education requirement, salary rewards, promotional opportunity, gender inequality and gender relatable biases so as to prove the existence of gender bias in the accountancy job market.
During the past several decades, an increase in female participation has been witnessed in the undergraduate and graduate programs. This has resulted to changes in the employment of women but it has not fully impacted gender distribution amongst the different ranks in the job. Some of the women have graduated but yet are offered job opportunities as the junior employees while a male gender with the same level of education happens to be employed with at a higher accountancy level than the woman. However, most of the women who majors in accountancy line of education tend to graduate with higher and better grades as compared to that of the male gender. This has therefore resulted to high entry of female accountants in the job. This was however not the case in the years that have past but currently the women who are entering in this profession tend to have a better competitive advantage more than the men. Unfortunately, the women hold a considerably smaller proportion of higher accounting positions than men and are limited to becoming partners in the accounting organizations as compared to men.
Feminists’ movements such as the one that occurred in 1960, they advocated for a more gender unbiased character towards women but it is so unfortunate that the inequality character towards women still do exist even to date. Though most of both male and female graduate and set in to accountants jobs at the same foot or rather the female enter into the job with better results than men, the male still seems to dominate more than women in the highest managerial positions in accounting (Rowe, Jessica 3) . A good example of a statistics given by the human development index report in 2013, the report states that the labor force contribution rate for females was lower than that of the male. In Australia, “only three percent of all director positions in the top five hundred companies are held by women” (Hoddinott ae al 60).
Some of the beliefs that are related to gender bias argue out that there is a negative correlation between the career women’s duration in marriage and work commitment but following the various researches it is evident that there is a positive relationship between the working commitments and the span of marriage for these working women. Another belief which is not contrary to what is happening today is that single women are more committed to their work than women with children (Rowe, Jessica 5). This is however not rue as most of the employees in accountancy view women with children as being more responsible than the women who are single . Most of the firms are currently being encouraged to assist and encourage the women in attaining upward movement in the accountant profession. This can only be enhanced by firms taking the responsibility to prepare the female gender to accept leadership positions in their career. Jacob and Schain suggest that: “the preparation includes understanding and dealing with the needs of female employees” (Jacobs et al 99). As a matter of fact so many women have entered into accounting but the challenge comes in as only few women are in position of partners. This is quite a challenge as the young women in the profession lack role models whom they would follow their examples in leadership even though there has been rapid increase in the number of women accountants enrolling to the accounting job. Though the women have progressively graduated with accounting degree over the years the development of women to the higher ranks of public accounting has been extremely slow.
Though the women are so significant in accounting profession, they receive low rewards than that of men even though they have same qualifications. However, the accounting career is advancing in equal gender pay as compared to other sectors but the gender pay gap is still evident. Women earn less as compared to their male counterparts and this difference is even existent in the provision of bonuses (Blau et al 1 ). The basic salary bonuses for the female are 13.9% while that of the males is 18.2%.
Equality in any accountancy firm is important as it ensures that the organization continues attracting personnel of the highest competence to the career that is, inclusive of the female gender. However, in accounting as the accountants take higher positions in management the gap pay also widens. It is thus essential that all women should realize that opportunities are equal to all hence they should seize them and ensure that they excel in their work so as to ensure that they bridge the gap between the gap pay (Blau et al 5). According to the National Statistics, “ the gender pay across all sectors stands at 19.2%, which means women earn 81% of a man’s salary on a national level”. Since most of the organizations have been paying off men more than the women, most firms follow this procedure to pay their employees hence discriminating the women. Also another reason for the payment of lesser salaries to the women is the fact that most of the decision makers and salary distributors are men. In most cases, the male gender accountants are more likely to push forward the rise of their salary as compared to women. Most of the female gender accountants are expectant of medium pay while their male counterparts have very high salary expectations almost as twice as that of the women while they think they should even earn more than the current salary even if it is the best pay. Whereas women expect earnings at a modest rise as compared to the men who are determined to earn the highest rewards than their present pay and this is what results to the widening of the gap pay (Blau et al 4).
Institutional discrimination against the female gender is also evident in performance evaluation in the accounting organization so as to evaluate and determine the company’s rewards such as promotion opportunities, punishments and compensation. The human resource policy that is used by the decision makers in evaluation of performance of the employees mostly tends to favor male gender than the female gender (Stamarski et al 3). For example undertaking of the face time performance measure, which is involved at rewarding the employees who are always available in the office, tend to reward the men more.
This is because men are the secondary givers while the women are primary givers thus they use flexible working arrangements than the men. Hence they are mostly penalized as they are not always in the face of the office as compared to the men. This therefore reduces their chances of promotion into senior positions in the accountancy firms. Also with companies in which there exist job ladders that are formal, women are likely to be promoted since the formal ladders orders and constrain workers promotion (Stamarski et al 3). This is because most of these job ladders are divided by gender hence in order to advance one must be on that job ladder and there is strictly no opportunity to shift to another job ladder. Hence the women lack the job experience needed for particular job promotion since it was not in their line of job ladder.
It is therefore important that all the accountants’ organizations should embrace the changes that have occurred to the female gender and hence accepting them in the job market. Women are empowered and they are capable of doing great and significant improvement in the accounting profession. Hence they should be given a chance to practice their skills and a platform to utilize their proficiency and expertise. When it comes to rewarding the accountants, equal payment should be made as these women work hard to see themselves succeeding and this would encourage them to feel at the right profession. Also in terms of promotion, women ought to be given promotions as well as the men are given since they are also part of the firm and this would help the firm to express their appreciation to the women.
References
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Jacobs, Pearl, and Linda Schain. "Professional women: The continuing struggle for acceptance and equality." Journal of Academic and Business Ethics 1 (2009): 98.
Hoddinott, Mark, and Denise G. Jarratt. "Gender imbalance in the workforce: An examination of the public accounting profession." Australian Accounting Review 8.16 (1998): 59-67.
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