Success of female accountants explored

A new book published by Chartered Accountants Ireland looks at the profile of women who make it to the top of the accountancy profession. The book, The Minority Interest - Women who Succeed in the Accountancy Profession, is written by Professor Patricia Barker.

Women now enter the profession as students in equal numbers to men, but they still encounter obstacles in achieving partnership. Additionally, they 'quit' the partnership track in greater numbers than men. Much has been written about the barriers which prevent women from breaking the glass ceiling, but The Minority Interest takes the ground-breaking approach of focusing instead on women who have overcome the obstacles and achieved partnership in their accountancy firms.

The author interviewed 43 women partners from the 4 four largest firms in the world and has drawn common themes from their stories. Some of the common themes were:

• The women came from mixed backgrounds, had mothers who worked full-time in the home and had parents who supported them but did not push them.
  
• Nearly all the women attended single-sex schools and had good academic records at school and at university.
  
• They displayed predominantly masculine characteristics, were competitive, and had a need to be financially independent. They typically felt less self-assured than the highly confident personas they projected.
  
• Many had taken a strategic decision not to have children or to defer motherhood in order to pursue their careers (45% of them had no children and a further 15% had only one child).
  
• 77% were or had been married and they pointed out the desirability of having a husband:
  - For their support,
  - To save time that would otherwise be spent meeting men and
  - To make socialising with male clients less open to misunderstanding.
  
• They referred to the importance of having had male mentors themselves. However, they did not feel that they themselves were good mentors to young women.
  
• Whilst they observed the importance of the 'boys' network' in the profession, they were reluctant to form a women's network lest it be misinterpreted as a 'knitting circle'.
  
• Although their career track to partnership was heavily planned and structured, their post-partnership career planning was less organised.

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