Gender diversity in the workplace is fundamental to business success; research has shown that companies with more women in leadership positions are more profitable and more efficient. But has anyone told the accountancy profession, asks Rachel Fielding?
Despite attempts to position themselves as the advisers of choice to huge swathes of business, accountancy firms are falling short when it comes to redressing their own senior level gender imbalance.
Across the top 25, just 10 networks and associations report female partner numbers.
Of those that do, the average proportion of female partners stands at 17.9%, masking huge variations in the numbers, from a high of 20% at KPMG and 18% at Deloitte and Nexia, to a disappointing 7% at IAPA. The silence of the majority also prompts questions about just how representative that average figure is.
For a Big Four firm like KPMG the issue is taken very seriously although progress is fairly slow. ‘We have to do a better job going forward,’ Bannister accepts.
‘If we don’t reflect our clients, our relevance to them is under threat. It’s the right thing to do, but it’s also commercially the right thing to do.’
But even Grant Thornton International, the international network to which it belongs, cannot claim to have cracked this particular nut.
Just 576 of its 3,087 partners around the world are women at almost 19%, it falls short of the 23.5% of board positions held by women at FTSE 100 companies and a long way off the 30% recognised as the critical mass needed to make a difference.
Publicly traded companies with male-only executive directors missed out on £430bn of investment returns last year, according to a report by Grant Thornton, Women in business: the value of diversity.
17.9%
Percentage of female partners at networks and associations reporting split
As the battle for talent ramps up, it seems at best short-sighted (at worst, commercial suicide) that the accountancy profession is doing little more than paying lip service to the diversity mantra. Even among the Big Four, who have dedicated diversity tsars, there is much work to be done.
Instead of leading by example, only two of them even report female partner numbers globally.
Market leader PwC remains resolutely and depressingly tacit, perhaps considering it a step too far. For yet another year, it has failed to provide numbers.
A glimmer of hope at EY; although it failed to disclose figures, its latest financial report claims that FY15’s partner class is ‘the most diverse ever’ with 31% women.
Global networks and associations - mumber of women partners
Further reading
Click here for 2016 accounting networks and associations survey, including report and league tables
