Towards Progress in Gender Research in Accounting: Challenges for Studies in Three Domains

Abstract

Gender research in accounting has been conducted at the work place and in the academy for students and faculty. In each area, a certain maturity has been achieved that reflects the limitations of the paradigm in use throughout most of the work. This paper reviews this literature with an aim toward illustrating that if reconceptualized, this corpus of research sets the stage for more ambitious work. Ideas are offered to revitalize the explorations of academics interested in gendered phenomenon. The emergence of concern regarding gender in the accounting community has been a nascent phenomenon. The near absence of any work prior to 1970 bears worthy contrast to the ample attention that this topic has attained after 1985. Notwithstanding its current popularity, gender research in accounting merits a critical examination. This task pertains more to a consideration of what needs to be known than it does to a rigorous evaluation of what has been studied. This paper argues that gender researchers have employed conventional empirical methodologies and Weltanschauung. As a result, the questions typically asked are much less ambitious than they need be in order to further the development of important knowledge. Reorienting the study of gender in accounting could be characterized as requiring a break from tradition, using qualitative methods and less traditional perspectives. In another light, however, such a movement represents a capitalization upon past work. Recent interdisciplinary scholarship, offers a wide variety of insights for these purposes.

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