Beautiful SWAN, or ugly duckling? The attempt to reduce gender inequality by the Society of Women Accountants of Nigeria

Abstract

• The role of women leaders’ in transforming inequality may become transitory. • Women leaders can transform, as well as reinforce inequalities simultaneously. • Women’s access to leadership does not guaranty long term gender equality policies. • Underlying sociocultural pressures may weaken women leader’s emancipatory efforts. • Intersecting identities of women leaders shape their role in changing inequalities. The global issue of women's marginalisation in the accounting profession has received significant attention from researchers but tends to focus on women’s work in public accounting firms, rather than their leadership in professional associations, and has as yet failed to explore the African context. Additionally, it is often argued that when women are involved in leadership positions, they can transform inequality by highlighting and reversing practices that marginalise women, but whether this happens in practice is overlooked in the accounting literature. In this study we begin to address these gaps by using Huffman's ( Huffman, 2016 ) conceptualisation of women leaders as agents of change or cogs in the machine to articulate the role and impact of a Nigerian female body of accountants on inequality in the Nigerian accounting profession. Our findings reveal a complex scenario showing that while women leaders may transform inequality positively, underlying sociocultural pressures have the potential to divert and subvert long run change. Thus, our findings suggest that either women leaders play a transitory role in transforming gender inequality in the accounting profession and society, or that their role becomes transitory if focus on the original emancipatory objectives is lost.