Abstract
Purpose While women are increasingly in senior positions in accountancy firms, a century after gaining entry to this once exclusively male field, they are still struggling to achieve career success. The concept of possible selves and a model of career crafting are activated in an analysis of how a set of New Zealand professional accountants have pursued their careers. This paper aims to focus on how people actively craft career selves in the context of organisational and gendered constraints, some of which are self-imposed, and therefore, can be modified and revised. Design/methodology/approach Interviews with 36 male and female accounting professionals in New Zealand – 21 working in private firms and 15 in academia identify how careers are shaped by contexts, cultural understandings of gender, organisational structures within which accountants are located and wider environmental factors. Findings Women accountants in this study are both agential and responsive to a range of constraints they encounter. These women challenge the notion that professional achievement requires single minded allegiance to a career; their strategic career crafting demonstrates how career and family commitments are not irreconcilable but can be skilfully integrated to nurture multiple selves. Their strategies are considered alongside those of a comparable set of male accountants. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature on possible selves and the complexity of gendered lives through the application of a career crafting matrix to explore how accounting professionals forge careers and construct multiple selves.
Highlights
The question of how selves are constructed and reconstructed has been of considerable long term interest (Berger and Luckman, 1966; Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934)
Pregnancy and childbearing had an impact on the careers of all the mothers in this study, wider socio-cultural and institutional beliefs acted as limiting factors in crafting their different selves
This paper has explored the relationship between gender, career crafting and possible selves
Summary
The question of how selves are constructed and reconstructed has been of considerable long term interest (Berger and Luckman, 1966; Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934). The individual is not oneself, but many selves and each encounters periods of transition. Individuals are not static fully informed identities; rather they shift through various positions during their lives (Del Corso and Rehfuss, 2011). While they may aspire to be different selves, the activities involved in activating those selves may conflict. Do various selves wax and wane with different life stages and intertwine and overlap, setting up competing demands on individuals
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