Source:  International Labour Organisation (ILO), Statistics on employment.

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A quick herstory of the accounting profession

 

Change is possible.  And the accounting profession is proof.  What follows is a quick “herstory” of the profession, and how time has proven early assumptions about women’s emotional and intellectual capabilities to be wrong.  Their hearts do not undermine their capabilities and their minds are every bit as sharp as their male peers.

 

Accounting sits under the business and administration umbrella of professions that the data we have just looked at tells us has been persistently balanced over the last 30 years.  Indeed if we examine the membership of one of Australia’s large professional accounting bodies, CPA Australia, we find that women now tip the scale in their favour, comprising 51 percent of all members. 

 

However, if we look back more than 30 years, way back to when the profession was establishing itself in the early days of Federation, the share of women recognised by the profession was a big fat zero percent.

 

This herstory begs the following questions:  How and why were there originally no female professional accountants?  And what changed?

 

Before I address these questions, let me first acknowledge retired accounting academic, Kathie Cooper, who in relatively recent years shared her seminal research, the findings of which filled a previously missing vital piece of the profession’s herstory.  In 2008, she told the story of Mary Addison Hamilton who, bearing the well-suited nickname of ‘Addie’, was not just Australia’s first lady of numbers, but the British Empire’s.  Two years later, Kathie traced the campaign by women in Australia to gain admission to the accounting profession.  The early herstory of the accounting profession recounted here draws on her research and insights.

 

Accounting professional bodies were prolific in Australia from the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth when, through various amalgamations, there became two dominant bodies: the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia, now known as Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ); and the Australian Society of Accountants (ASA), which subsequently became the Australian Society of Certified Practicing Accountants (ASCPA), and is now CPA Australia.  

 

None of CA ANZ’s or CPA Australia’s antecedent bodies explicitly excluded female membership.  This was achieved by implication that the membership rules and articles of each were couched in masculine terms.  For example, the admission to membership criteria of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants stated that applicants must apply in writing stating “the nature of his business, profession or occupation since he applied to be admitted to the prescribed examinations”.  The implication subsequently became specific by a narrow legal interpretation that the articles referred only to the masculine gender.  Accordingly, female membership was precluded, with amendments only possible by a vote of an all-male membership.

 

When the first reported formal application was received in 1899 for a woman to sit the Incorporated Institute of Accountants, Victoria’s examinations with a view to membership, this and subsequent attempts failed due to member council procrastination and dubious ballots.  When the original application was eventually put to the vote, it was lost by 69 votes against to 26 in favour, despite there being only 15 members who actually attended the member council meeting.  Nonetheless, this created a precedent for refusing future applications.  As did subsequent ballots.

 

In 1917, a resolution of the council of the Australasian Corporation of Public Accountants reached a year earlier that it is desirable to admit women to membership was put to the vote at the annual meetings of members in each state.  While the aggregate result was positive, due to its narrowness it was deemed that alteration of the articles was impracticable.  The smoke screen provided by the narrow legal interpretation of membership criteria prevailed.

 

It took until 1921 for the subject of women’s admission to returned to the Corporation’s agenda.  Until 2022 for the council to resolve that steps be taken to alter its articles so that women may be eligible for admission to membership.  And until 2027 for it to be resolved that articles be amended to include that “words importing the masculine gender shall include the feminine”.  The Corporation was the final Australian professional accounting organisation to open its membership to women.

 

In other words, up until this last bastion had fallen, narrow legal interpretation, dubious ballots and procrastination explained "how" women were prevented from membership in the accounting profession.  

 

But it is arguably the "why" that is of greater interest.  The excuses that played out over time boiled down to perceptions about the nature, abilities and role of women.

 

Let us start with their nature.  Forming part of the British Empire, the Australian accounting profession inherited the perspectives of its United Kingdom (UK) counterparts.  There the view held by some accountants and lawyers was that the happiest profession for a woman was matrimony.  And that a woman might not succeed because “no inconsiderable part of an accountant’s duties consist in acting as trustees, liquidators, receivers, &c., for which work obviously women would be less fitted than for the more peaceful and artistic avocations” (“Lady Accountants”, The Accountant, (1900) February 17).  In Australia it was similarly argued that the prospect of membership was contrary to nature because a woman should be a man’s friend and companion (“The Admission of Women into the Profession”, The Accountant, (1915) January 23).

 

Moving on to abilities.  Another blocker that carried over from the UK was the fear that the admission of women would lower standards.  Way back in 1889, an enlightened member of the UK Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors argued that women and men had equal mental abilities and that women should not be excluded from the Society.  However, this suggestion was roundly dismissed and, amongst other things, discounted as being mischievous and that the admission of women would be seen as evidence that the members of the Society were not fully qualified. 

 

The view that women did not possess the intelligence suited to accounting work modified over time due to war time demands and demonstrated competency in roles (two points I will shortly return to).  Women were conveniently regarded as suited to routine roles, such as bookkeeping, but ill-suited to roles that required them to be more constructive, analytical and critical thinkers.  These were claimed to be the province of professional gentlemen. 

 

Some begrudged women even the former.  Prior to the war, many actively or passively resisted any movement that would allow women to compete with men within the workplace, including undertaking accounting work.  The fear was that competition and a willingness to work for less would crowd out men and drive down wages.  Nonetheless, it became necessary during wartime for women to take on the roles of men who joined the armed forces, even if those roles were conveniently reclassified.  Once the war was ended, however, the expectation of many was that women relinquish their roles, as women did not need to work like men did.  Tell that to Australia’s first female accountant, Addie, who, as an unmarried woman, had to support herself and her parents.

 

Summarising up until this point:  The "how" women were kept out of the accounting professional was a narrow interpretation of Australian professional bodies articles.  And the "why" boiled down to perceptions of the nature, abilities and role of women.  Which brings us to the question of: what changed?

 

From tiny beginnings in 1916, when Addie had successfully completed all her exams and was permitted entry to the Institute of Accountants and Auditors of West Australia (the WA Institute), progress was initially painfully slow.  The WA Institute was one of the antecedent professional accounting bodies to CPA Australia.  The chart below, which I have cobbled together from a variety of sources, tracks the initially slow, then accelerated feminisation of CPA Australia’s membership.

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The feminisation of CPA Australia’s membership

Share of members who are women​