Gendered Hierarchies of Dependency: Women Making Partnership in Accountancy Firms

Accountancy is an elite profession, wielding its influence in every step we take in business and political life, from takeover to bankruptcies and from Brexit to war: we need accountants to help us see the bigger picture and to enable us to trust one another in public life. But for much of the profession's history, women were excluded from it and, while we have seen great advances in women's access to the profession, women remain significantly underrepresented at the top of the hierarchy and amid partnership ranks across the industry and globally. Importantly, there are noteworthy differences in the severity of this underrepresentation across national borders which remain underexplored. Gendered Hierarchies of Dependency considers this underrepresentation of women at partnership level cross-nationally and through a feminist lens, analysing interviews with female partners in Germany and the United Kingdom. In doing so, Kokot-Blamey innovatively merges insights from accountancy and organization studies, political economy, and the feminist ethics of care literature to contribute to contemporary debates about women at work, neoliberalism and the capitalist fiction of the autonomous self. Beyond career advancement to partnership, Kokot-Blamey examines several timely issues such as the persistence of discrimination and sexism at work, motherhood, and weathering recessions and economic crises in accountancy. Revealing important insights into the day-to-day working and private lives of modern elites, this book shows how hierarchies are negotiated differently across borders, but that the outcomes are always gendered.

Table of Contents:
1: Introduction: Feminism, Capitalism, and Dependency 2: Accounting Matters - Mapping Women's Underrepresentation in Accountancy 3: Making Partnership in Accounting - Career Histories, Structures, and Relationships at Work 4: Sexism at Work 5: Mothering in Accounting 6: Job Security and Work Centrality 7: Concluding Discussion and Gendered Hierarchies of Dependency

About the Author :
Dr Patrizia Kokot-Blamey is a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. She holds a PhD in Gender Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. She completed a Master's degree as well as her undergraduate studies in Economics at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Before pursuing an academic career, Patrizia worked as a financial journalist and correspondent for Reuters News and Thomson Financial, reporting on European equities and economics.

Review :
Gendered Hierarchies of Dependency compares the experience of female accountants in Germany to those in the UK. This insightful book is a valuable addition to the comparative study of accounting and to the literature on gender at work. Kokot Blamey provides a fascinating and in-depth account of women's careers in professional accountancy in Germany and the UK. Her powerful analysis identifies that sexism, job insecurity and gendered hierarchies of dependency persist under neo-liberal capitalism. The book brilliantly illuminates the functioning of the accounting profession in regard to gender. Drawing on a rich body of empirical material, Patrizia Kokot-Blamey offers a compelling comparative analysis of how women partners make sense of careers, sexism, motherhood, and job security in Germany and the UK. A thought-provoking book. Kokot Blamey questions whether creating standardized career structures that offer the illusion of individual "choice and autonomy" are truly satisfying solutions for women who seek to personally control their bodies and reproductive experiences crossing work and nonwork boundaries. Scholars and managers seeking a thoughtful current analysis of the complexity of truly supporting mothers' careers across societies should read this fascinating book. Gendered Hierarchies of Dependency: Women Making Partnership in Accountancy Firms provides an original, and accessible account of the persistence of gender inequality at the top levels of organisations despite the attention paid to equalities and diversity policies. The book's cross-cultural insights from the UK and Germany into women's experiences achieving partnership in the accounting and professional services sector carry important messages that can inform both personal and leadership direction - and help businesses sustain resilient and competitive talent pipelines for growth for the long term.