Female representation at the upper ranks of the accounting profession has been improving in recent years, but there are still inequities as accountants strive to do more for pay equity on International Women’s Day.
CliftonLarsonAllen is one firm that’s had female leadership in place for a long time. Its predecessor firm, Clifton Gunderson, was led by Kris McMasters, who became the first female CEO of a Top 25 Firm in 2009. She departed a year after the firm’s 2012 merger with LarsonAllen, but in 2021, Jen Leary became CEO.
“At CLA, strong women are absolutely vital to our organization and they always have been,” said Leary. “March is a month where we really can reflect on the accomplishments of our women, both inside of CLA as well as our clients and our communities. Strong women are vital to our organization, and they’re vital to the success of CLA. I personally don’t believe we can maintain our standing as one of the top professional services firms in this country without really enabling our women to be and work at their best. So when we think about March, we think about an opportunity to celebrate International Women's Day itself. We have a lot of communications and celebrations that we have been planning for some time.”
On International Women’s Day on Tuesday CLA will host a panel discussion in a webinar featuring some of the firm’s female leaders from different parts of the country. It will also be marking the day on social media, but its efforts go beyond that throughout Women’s History Month and the rest of the year.
“One of the things that I'm most proud of at CLA is the impact that our virtual belonging communities have had, specifically our Women and Careers,” said Leary. “That is one of our biggest virtual belonging communities that we have, and it comprises hundreds of women from across the country that really just connect to engage together to support each other and to help enable these strong careers. ... That group has four signature events that they’re going to be running throughout the year. Those events are driven at networking and leadership development. There will be training. But I think the most important thing is just the ability to pause and reflect and support each other. That’s really the power of our virtual belonging communities here.”
The programs have been going on for several years, but they have ramped up even more since the start of the pandemic. “We have definitely added more focus in the last 24 months,” said Leary. “If you just think about the demographics of our group, we have over 7,800 people inside of CLA, and 53% of them are strong women and we are increasing the percentages of women in leadership roles across nearly every category of the firm. They impact our services, our industries, our geographies, and we report and monitor the impact that we have with all of our workforce, but specifically our women.”
Other firms are also stepping up their efforts, including Ernst & Young. “Both at our client organizations as well as within EY, we’re seeing more and more women go into the wonderful world of the tax profession,” said global vice chair of tax Kate Barton. “More and more of our women rise up to partner level. Globally, amongst all of our tax partners, we’re really proud of having one-third of them be women, and that continues to increase. Our new classes are about 52% women. The overall class continues to grow in terms of gender diversity. Overall, I believe that this year we’ll be around 35% women, but the new incoming class will be 54%. It’s just a product of more women coming into the profession, either with the hot skills that we need or just the requisite background.”
More women at the Big Four firm have been reaching the partner level and executive management. “For example, our Global Executive, which I’m a member of, 34% of the seats are women,” said Barton. The firm also recently announced that its next U.S. chair and managing partner would be Julie Boland (
While there has been progress at many of the top firms, much more needs to be done to achieve equity in the profession.
“I think that the industry has made strides,” said Leary. “I think the industry is a great industry for women to be successful. But I do believe that we have a long way to go. We have to continue to invest in our women and make sure that we’re helping them build careers that are fulfilling for them personally and professionally. ... It’s recognizing that a lot of good work has been done, but also realizing that we've got a ways to go.”
CLA and other firms have been working with the American Institute of CPAs on increasing diversity, equality and inclusion in the accounting profession.
One area where more work needs to be done is pay equity not only in accounting, but in other professions as well. “I’ve been happy to see that in some organizations they have taken very bold steps to have gender pay gap statements,” said KET Solutions CEO Kimberly Ellison-Taylor, chair of the AICPA’s National Commission on Diversity and Inclusion Committee, during an online webinar Tuesday for International Women’s Day co-sponsored by the International Federation of Accountants and PepTalkHer. “They’ve done the research. I think it’s really important to be intentional. There are organizations that have not even looked at their actual data to determine where they stand. If you’re not intentional, chances are you do have a pay gap because it take intentionality, it takes doing it on purpose. You can’t just have a range. There’s a lot of abuse that can happen in the ranges, so now that organizations and some of the states have stepped in. When you ask someone what they were paid previously, if I was underpaid when I started my career, it’s going to compound over and over and over again. When you ask me how much did I make and my salary history, I’m going to get 10% more than the underpayment I’ve been getting my whole career, so how am I ever going to catch up using that kind of logic?”
Management accountants are also seeing more advancements for women in the profession working on issues such as sustainability and environmental, social and governance issues. “In connection with International Women’s Day is the noticeable portion of professionals in sustainability that are women,” said Shari Littan, director of corporate reporting research and policy at the IMA. “Possibly it’s because the discipline is new, it’s younger, and therefore it presents more opportunities, less of a traditional culture that goes back decades and decades. The fact that it’s new creates new opportunities.”
The challenges to gender diversity can be found in many other professions as well, but the situation is evolving. "In the earlier time period for the profession, there was less diversity at large,” said Loreal Jiles, vice president of research and thought leadership at the IMA. “That’s for a myriad of reasons: barriers to entry into the profession, lack of access to the profession, inequitable opportunities for development to gain the skills that were needed. There were many instances where there wasn’t equal access to the educational opportunities for women and men. As we look to some of those systemic disadvantages across multiple disciplines, that contributes to why in senior leadership roles today people who would have been in the profession for 30 or 40 years in some instances wouldn’t have had the same opportunity to progress at an equal pace. And because of that, we do see greater traction in some of the more emerging discipline areas like sustainability or ESG. There are a host of barriers that are still in place today, although we made much more progress within the last couple of decades than we have seen in the past.”
Much work remains on providing for greater gender equity in accounting and other professions and on opening the doors to more women in the profession. “I think a lot of good work has been done, but we have a long way to go,” said Leary. “If we think about the accounting profession as a whole, we need more people interested in the profession. That’s the first thing. Impacting high schools, even middle schools, to show that there can be a great career in accounting, I think it is a priority of both the AICPA as well as CLA. More needs to be done to invite more people into the industry and then to hold onto those people. I can speak to CLA demographics. We have seen that we are able to welcome more women and more diverse candidates into our intern and associate levels. And now we’re focused on maintaining those team members and providing them great careers, so retention is really the priority for us.”
Work-life balance and workplace flexibility have become even more important with the increasing demands on women during the pandemic.
“I think one of the superpowers of many women is their capacity to get things done, and I believe organizations will be most successful when they hire strong women, they’re very clear about expectations and then they just trust them to get things done in the manner that makes it work for them internally and externally,” said Leary. “We are in a professional services business, which means that we are connected to our clients, we’re connected to our people, we train the next generation, and so we can do many things when we’re sitting side by side, and we can complement that by being flexible and having remote work arrangements.”
