A gender-balanced profession

International Women’s Day (on 8 March this year) provokes mixed emotions. First of all, it’s a celebration. It gives us a chance to recognise strides forward in opportunities and greater fairness for women – particularly in the workplace, in business and, for us especially, in accountancy.

I have seen enormous progress during my own career in finance and in education in my corner of Northern Ireland. For the first 20 years I worked for an unbroken line of male bosses. In my last 22 years, all my managers were female. At some point we reached a tipping point where the efforts of generations of women to achieve due recognition and the promotions they deserved finally breached an invisible dam.

As a father of a daughter and grandfather of a granddaughter, I have my own personal reasons to rejoice in these advances. On the other hand, we also know that the picture around the world is patchy. There are still too many places where education and career opportunities for females lag a long way behind those of their male counterparts.

More to do

While we see positive signs of greater equality, we are never complacent. It is a battle that is never won. There is always more to do. Yet we take satisfaction from advances in female representation in accountancy. Of our global members, 48% are women. That number is trending upwards, as our female students exceed men by 59% to 41%.

Most ACCA Council members – 28 of 45 – are women. Our chief executive, Helen Brand, heads a six-strong board, four of whom are women. I am lucky to serve alongside two brilliant women, our deputy president Ayla Majid and our vice president, Melanie Proffitt (see this month’s interview with them). Stats never tell the full story – but in this case they give a strong indication that women see ACCA as a place where they can build a career.

It means that when young women ask about working in accountancy, we can tell them proudly that ACCA exists to extend such opportunities. It’s precisely why we were founded, in 1904 – to end the iniquitous situation where you could only join the profession if you were a male with money. We cherish the memory of Ethel Ayres Purdie – suffragist, writer, accountant and our first female member, who has been an inspiration to so many women who followed her footsteps into professional life.

Inspiring stories

We have published a celebration of female members to mark International Women’s Day. I particularly enjoyed the inspiring story told by Sterlyne Smith FCCA, from Trinidad and Tobago. She describes how she rose from humble beginnings as an office temp, studied ACCA, built a career, and now leads large finance teams – while also encouraging female colleagues to pursue their own ambitions as far as their talent will take them.

‘From childhood I admired my mother’s determination to excel academically and professionally,’ she says. ‘This became the benchmark for my career. I used that resilient strength learnt from my mother to move from being a temporary staff member to a manager of finance. It’s not just how you start, but more so how you navigate and finish.’

And I will finish this column by sharing my best wishes and greatest hope for the future with all our female members on this International Women’s Day.