ACCA Highlights Lack Of Female Finance Professionals At Senior Levels

Tue, 23 Oct 2007

The accounting profession in the UK has been urged to place more emphasis on the issue of gender diversity amongst the top finance professionals.

A newly released ACCA survey – ‘Paths to the top – best practice leadership development for finance professionals’, revealed that very few female accountancy students were found at senior levels, even though they make up more than half of those entering the profession.

Roughly two-thirds of the 3500 ACCA members included in the report feel it was harder for women to become finance leaders than men.

The research was backed up by official statistics which showed that as of August 2007, there was only one female financial director in the FTSE 100 and less than 10 per cent of partners with the UK ‘Big Four’ were female.

One of the main reasons cited for the lack of top women professionals was work-life balance (67 per cent), although institutional bias and cultural expectations were also labelled by 46 per cent of respondents as barriers.

The ACCA report added that "this clearly remains an issue for the profession and employers to focus on more, as insufficient progress appears to have been made in the last few decades".

Although 44 per cent of respondents felt the recruitment process was transparent, a third, more significantly, felt that it was not.
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