Female accountants in China : an alternative feminist discourse on the changing professional and gender identities

Abstract

Women’s experiences in the accounting profession have attracted substantial attention in the accounting literature. Most research in the gender and accounting fields is set in Western contexts, therefore the relationship between women and accounting in non-Western contexts requires further exploration. This study is set in China to understand how different generations of Chinese women accountants construct their professional and gender identities. Theoretically, this study is framed by feminist poststructuralism to identify dominant discourses on women and accounting in China and to further reveal their discursive power on Chinese women accountants’ identity construction. Data is collected by in-depth semi-structured interviews with 31 Chinese women accountants from various backgrounds and generations. This study identifies two dominant discourses on accounting professionals in China: ‘accountants are serious and cautious’ and ‘women are more suitable than men to work as accountants’. The dominant discourses on the accounting profession have encouraged generations of Chinese women to enter the accounting profession. Although Chinese women accountants do not need to mimic men’s behaviour and outfits like their Western counterparts, they are expected to perform in line with the traditional Confucian female virtues. This suggests that the accounting profession in China has favoured women because accounting roles and functions in China have been similar to traditional Chinese women’s roles and functions in the family. However, the female-dominated accounting profession in China does not provide women with the privilege or prestige enjoyed by men in the male-dominated accounting profession in Western contexts. Gendered discourses on women have still created gendered barriers in the workplace and disadvantaged Chinese women accountants from progressing their careers to a higher level. This study further explores Chinese women accountants’ unique understanding of professionalism. Chinese women accountants recognise having integrity, being responsible and ethical as the most important factors for professional accountants. Additionally, they are aware that the emotional and personal ties and strong obligations involved in networking in China might threaten their integrity as professional accountants. As a result, they often prioritise professional knowledge over networking. Furthermore, this study finds that accounting professionals in China face a similar transformation as their Western counterparts – from the traditional accountant to the hybrid business professional who is competent in management, consultancy and IT. As a result, the distance between bookkeeping and accounting has increased in China. The traditional career path for Chinese accountants (accounting clerk – accountant – accounting supervisor – manager – chief accountant/partner) has been destabilised, which has created increasing identity insecurity and more gendered barriers in the workplace for Chinese women accountants. Nevertheless, many Chinese women accountants have proactively taken this transformation as an opportunity to reconstruct their professional identities and overcome gendered discourses. This study contributes to the existing gender and accounting literature by revealing generational differences between Chinese women accountants in their gender and professional identities. This study finds that older generations tend to ignore or adopt gendered barriers to gain acceptability in the workplace whereas younger generations of Chinese women accountants often choose to resist them in the workplace. Older generations tend to construct their identity as the ‘hard-worker’ while the younger accountants prefer a balance between life and work and are not afraid of refusing to work overtime. Women accountants from older generations tend to follow the informal seniority and hierarchy rules in the workplace in order to progress in their career whereas younger generations often play as the ‘rule-breakers’ because they understand seniority rules as ‘redundant, formalistic and bureaucratic’ adding no additional value to the accounting workplace. Additionally, this study shows conflicts in the workplace between different generations of women accountants but also reveals women accountants’ sisterhood in overcoming gendered barriers together in the workplace. Overall, this study works as an alternative discourse on accounting and women and sheds light on the unique professionalisation process of accounting in a post-socialist Chinese context. Future research should explore the dynamic relations between women and accounting in different contexts and investigate what role accounting plays in supporting or challenging cultural and social norms which produce gendered professional identity and gender divisions in the workplace.