This year almost half of all networks and associations provided gender diversity statistics.

Europe and Asia Pacific lead the way when it comes to employing women, with an average of over 45% of  all accountants being female in the organisations which reported this data.

One surprise is the low gender diversity number reported in North America. Here, on average, less than 35% of accountants were female.

Hidden in this total was a wide variety of individual answers – some networks and associations reported around half of those employed as being female, however the average was brought down by a few larger networks and associations who reported just 10-20% of their staff being female. Africa reported a similar overall percentage as North America, however the figures were more consistent between organisations.

Looking at the partner figures makes for less encouraging reading. It should be noted the total figure would have been skewed by the lack of US and European partner level data, which was not collected. Looking at the regions, again, Asia Pacific led the way, while the Middle East reported less than 10% of its partners as being female. Latin America has the biggest difference between the percentage of staff who are female (41.8%), compared to the number of partners who are female (14.34%).

Source: International Accounting Bulletin