History from accounting's margins: international research on race and gender

Abstract

Historical research in accounting has recently expanded to include studies of race, gender, and class and their impact on accounting. Building on Lehman's gender research (1992), recent work includes studies of the exclusion of Spanish women, African Americans, Maori women, and black South Africans from the practice of public accountancy and the marginalisation and deskilling of working-class accounting positions in the UK. Analyses have been conducted examining the role of the British profession in forestalling indigenisation in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and Kenya. This research on the accounting profession, in turn, has led to research on the impact of accounting practices on oppressed groups. While this widening of research areas is a welcome change, this article calls for more explicitly political motivations for historical accounting research and an ever-present focus on how this research can help ameliorate current oppressive conditions in which accounting plays a role.