Description
Research addressing how gendered space is experienced in the workplace, how accounting operates as a
gendered and gendering technology and how it impacts identity formation and gender performance is
sparse. This paper examines the relationship between accounting and lived experience in the gendered
workplace. We articulate a theoretical framing that examines gender producing processes and how
accounting functions as a gendering gaze at work. We then offer an overview of some key studies that
have examined accounting and gender in the workplace. We argue that the construction of gendered
identity in the workplace is about how individuals perform gender in an imaginatively produced space
for the purposes of control and domination. We identify three main themes that deserve the attention of
future researchers: a) how the human gaze produces gender divisions at work; b) how accounting
functions as a gaze and produces gender divisions in the workplace while noting the scope for resistance;
and c) how gendered accounting technologies reaffirm existing gender divisions
Accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace
*
Salvador Carmona
a
, Mahmoud Ezzamel
a, b, *
a
IE Business School, Madrid, Spain
b
Cardiff Business School, Cardiff, UK
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 23 June 2015
Accepted 16 November 2015
Available online xxx
Keywords:
Accounting
Gender performance
Identity
Workplace
Poetics of space
Politics of space
a b s t r a c t
Research addressing how gendered space is experienced in the workplace, how accounting operates as a
gendered and gendering technology and how it impacts identity formation and gender performance is
sparse. This paper examines the relationship between accounting and lived experience in the gendered
workplace. We articulate a theoretical framing that examines gender producing processes and how
accounting functions as a gendering gaze at work. We then offer an overview of some key studies that
have examined accounting and gender in the workplace. We argue that the construction of gendered
identity in the workplace is about how individuals perform gender in an imaginatively produced space
for the purposes of control and domination. We identify three main themes that deserve the attention of
future researchers: a) how the human gaze produces gender divisions at work; b) how accounting
functions as a gaze and produces gender divisions in the workplace while noting the scope for resistance;
and c) how gendered accounting technologies reaf?rm existing gender divisions.
Crown Copyright © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Within the social sciences, the study of gender performance and
identity in the workplace has received increasing attention (Acker,
1990; Butler, 2004). Accounting researchers are also examining the
role of accounting in gendered workplaces (Knights & Collinson,
1987; Walker, 2003). Gendered organizations, and gendered work-
places, feature a distinction between masculinity and femininity,
which reproduces gendered differences (Britton, 2000: 419). Ac-
counting technologies (calculations, vocabulary, symbols, images),
are signs that name, count and value objects, activities and in-
dividuals. These technologies intervene in the workplace and
impact performance, reward structures and the construction of
gender and identity. For example, in audit ?rms accounting mea-
sures shape the identity of trainees and partners (Anderson-Gough,
Grey, & Robson, 2001; Covaleski, Dirsmith, Heian, & Samuel, 1998).
Moreover, the introduction of accounting techniques of surveil-
lance can disrupt an individual's sense of self (Ezzamel & Willmott,
1998; Ezzamel, Willmott, & Worthington, 2004) and exert a
constitutive role in the construction of the workplace; for example,
by imposing its logic on space, by demarcating spaces into centres
of calculation, and by rendering these spaces visible (Carmona,
Ezzamel, & Guti errez, 2002; Miller & O'Leary, 1994). Researchers
have also examined the role of accounting technologies in rein-
forcing pre-existing views of gender and in the construction of new
gendered relations at work (Cooper & Taylor, 2000; Kornberger,
Carter, & Ross-Smith, 2010). Despite this wealth of research,
1
we
still have much to learn about the relationship between accounting
technologies and the gendered workplace (see Conlon, 2004: 464).
Accounting technologies are not gender-neutral but are both
gendering and gendered. They are gendering in the sense that they
produce gender divisions at work if, for example, performance
measures or reward structures create difference in the way women
and men are treated. In doing so, accounting technologies become
part of the wider processes of gendering, which are intrinsically
dynamic and changing over time. Accounting technologies are also
gendered to the extent that socially sanctioned divisions of roles
that differentiate between women and men on biological grounds,
for example, become incorporated in accounting vocabulary,
*
Paper presented at the 40th anniversary of Accounting, Organizations and So-
ciety Conference, London, 1e2 May 2015. We thank the participants of the Confer-
ence as well as Chris Chapman, David Cooper and Keith Robson for their
constructive comments. Financial support from project ECO2013-48393-P is
gratefully acknowledged.
* Corresponding author. Cardiff Business School, Cardiff, UK.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Carmona), [email protected].
uk, [email protected] (M. Ezzamel).
1
Special issues of accounting journals devoted to accounting and gender studies
include: Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1987, Vol. 12(1), and 1992, Vol. 17(3/
4); Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 1992, Vol. 5(3), and 2008, Vol.
21(4); Critical perspectives on Accounting, 1998, Vol. 9(3).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society
j ournal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ aoshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2015.11.004
0361-3682/Crown Copyright © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Accounting, Organizations and Society xxx (2015) 1e8
Please cite this article in press as: Carmona, S., & Ezzamel, M., Accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace, Accounting,
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measures and images. Shearer and Arrington (1993: 254, 260)
argue that the construction of accounting as a social practice
privileges the phallic male body because it promotes phallocentric
conceptions of economics, value and ethics, and its discourse em-
beds a sexual politics. In this paper, we suggest that studying the
relationship between accounting and the construction of gendered
identity in the workplace is about how individuals ‘do gender’ or
performgender (Butler, 1988, 1993; West &Zimmerman, 1987) and
how they react to the gaze, as there is always room for freedom in
systems of domination (Foucault, 1977, 1996: 232). Lived experi-
ence and gender performance are manifestations of the materiality
of the workplace which, we argue, must be brought to the fore in
accounting research on the gendered workplace (Hammond &
Oakes, 1992; Knights, 2015). Despite numerous important studies
that have examined the relationship between accounting and
gender (e.g., Kirkham & Loft, 1993; Shearer & Arrington, 1993;
Anderson-Gough, Grey, & Robson, 2005), we note a paucity of
studies addressing the role of accounting in shaping lived experi-
ence in the gendered workplace as well as in constructing gendered
divisions at work. Furthermore, several organizational arenas
deserve the attention of future research, in particular non-
bureaucratic organizations (Alvesson, 1998).
Our examination of the extant literature suggests that future
accounting research could fruitfully focus on the following issues.
First, the relationship between the human gaze and the workplace,
and how this affects gender performance and impacts lived expe-
rience at work. Secondly, how accounting technologies function as
a gaze, either as a replacement to or in support of the human gaze,
and how this role becomes part of the gendering processes in or-
ganizations that underpin existing gender divisions or create new
ones. Thirdly, how accounting technologies themselves become
gendered by incorporating culturally-wide gender divisions.
Further research in these areas should help unravel how the
workplace becomes a gendered space through the mediating role of
accounting.
In the remainder of this paper, we ?rst examine the notion of the
gendered workplace. Drawing on Said's (1978) understanding of
imaginative geographies as sites of appropriation, domination and
contestation, we underscore the materiality, poetics (lived experi-
ence) and politics of the workplace. As identity construction is
crucial in gender performance, we elaborate how the constitution
of gendered identity is a highly spatialized contest that occurs in a
network of power/knowledge relations. This is followed by an ex-
amination of how accounting operates as a gazing and gender
producing technology. Next, we drawon some selective accounting
studies of accounting and gender at work to emphasize their con-
tributions. In the ?nal section we suggest ways in which previous
research can be extended in the future, with reference to under-
researched elements of our theoretical framework.
1. The Gendered workplace
2
The allocation of roles at work can be gendered because it is
connected to cultural norms concerning who occupies public space
(e.g., Kamla, 2012). The workplace is an important public space
where identity is constituted and gender is performed. As Halford
and Leonard (2006: 54) note “workplaces matter to the ways in
which we have to negotiate our gender identities.” The workplace is
a space where cultural images of gender are reproduced (Hearn &
Parkin, 1987); for example, gender segregation based on mascu-
linity is the product of organizational processes and practices
(Acker, 1990) which impact individuals and work organization
(Martin, 2006).
The workplace is an arena where employees experience space,
hence the expressions ‘lived space’, or ‘experienced space’ as Dale
and Burrell (2008: 10) argue, is “overlaid with ‘imaginary spaces’
whereby the material and the cultural are fused. It is the social
creation of space so that signs, images and symbols are made ma-
terial.” Dale and Burrell's reference to ‘imaginary spaces’ connects
with Said's (1978) notion of “imaginative geographies”, which are
discursive formations, tense constellations of power, knowledge
and spatiality (Gregory, 1995a: 29; see also Foucault, 1980: 70).
‘Discursive formations’ underscore the role of language in shaping
employees as subjects and the objects they deal with. Furthermore,
‘tense constellations’ emphasize the contested nature of the re-
lationships between power, knowledge and space. Imaginative
geographies accentuate the difference and separation of one space
from another, for example directors' of?ce space from the shop-
?oor, which may comprise contradictions within power/knowledge
and spatial relations (Gregory, 1995b). As an imaginative geogra-
phy, the workspace is intentionally produced in order to be domi-
nated, exploited and controlled, and it can produce gender
divisions that re?ect cultural norms; for example, meeting places
and dressing rooms for (female) cleaners are placed in less-
prominent locations.
‘Lived experience’ in the workplace connects with the ‘poetics of
space’ (Said, 1978: 55): “The objective space of a house -its corners,
corridors, cellar, rooms-is far less important than what poetically it
is endowed with, which is usually a quality with an imaginative or
?gurative value we can name and feel: thus a house may be
haunted, or homelike, or prisonlike, or magical.” The workplace can
impart similar experiences on those who occupy that space. Said
also notes that the poetics of space are simultaneously ‘politics of
space’; lived experience at work is in part impacted by organiza-
tional politics that in?uence how space is con?gured and allocated
between women and men.
The workplace and gender are reciprocally constitutive of each
other, rather than one of them having primacy over the other (L€ ow,
2006: 129e130). In researching the gendered workplace, the focus
should be on “howgender is constantly rede?ned and negotiated in
the everyday practices through which individuals interact; how
men and women ‘do gender’ and how they contribute to the con-
struction of gender identities” (Poggio, 2006: 225). Gender is thus
not an essentialist biological conceptualization of male and female;
men and women construct gender at work through processes of
reciprocal positioning (Gherardi & Poggio, 2001). The performance
of gender in the workplace is productive of new spaces where
power/knowledge relations are exercised (Gregson & Rose, 2000).
Some feminist studies contend that the workplace is typically
masculine (Young, 1990: 176; see also the papers reviewed by
Hammond & Oakes, 1992). McDowell and Court (1994) argue that
in the professional workplace femininity is constituted as inferior
and de?cient compared to masculinity. This problematic binary
distinction between men and women is part of a hegemonic
discourse in feminist studies, it is a distinction claimed to be typical
of women's ‘bounded spatiality’ e manifest in their apparent
deferral to masculine authority: ‘I'm here, but it's his space’ (Young,
2005: 191). Tyler and Cohen (2010: 178e179, 193) coin the term
‘spaces that matter’, after Butler's ‘bodies that matter’, to signal
spaces that are a materialization of the cultural norms according to
which gender performances are enacted, and through which
adherence to these norms is signi?ed. Such culturally based binary
distinctions must be problematized. Indeed, Knights (2015: 206)
stresses the need to shatter the masculine/feminine and mind/body
binaries in order to avoid reproducing them in life as well as in
research, arguing that dissolving boundaries “invites a collapsing of
2
While recognizing that space and time are intertwined, we focus on the
workplace as a gendered space.
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the terms so that they no longer sustain and reproduce the polar-
ities, which re?ect and reproduce the domination of discourses of
masculinity.”
2. Accounting and identity in the workplace
This section examines the relationship between accounting and
the partial construction of identity, given that gender performance
at work is inextricably connected to identity formation. Dale and
Burrell (2008: 106) note that “the situation and relations of the
workplace have been seen as the most signi?cant site of identity
construction in late capitalist society.” Inhabiting a workplace is a
negotiated practice that entails active identity work (Dale, 2005).
The social construction of identity consists of a performance or
fabrication whose aim is to produce a coherent identity (Butler,
1999; Gregory, 1995b). The workplace and identity are mutually
constitutive; subjects de?ne a particular space and a particular
space produces certain subjects (Lefebvre, 1991; Said, 1978). This
theorization of the workplace emphasizes its performative power
in the production of precarious and partial identity. Identity is
fabricated through the practice of designating a familiar space as
“ours” and an unfamiliar space as “theirs” (Said, 1978: 54), an
“economy of objects and identities” that parallels Foucault's (1977)
emphasis on the demarcation of speci?c spaces for ‘Us’ and for the
‘Other’. Thus, identity construction involves establishing opposites;
it is a contest in power relations over time involving individuals and
institutions. Identity thus is temporalized, spatialized, and consti-
tuted by techniques of disciplinary power.
Accounting logics can be used to design new spaces intended,
for example, for control or for improving the aesthetics of space.
The con?gurations of cost centres or pro?t centres are examples of
imaginative geographies created for accounting purposes that
mediate the construction of identity at work (Anderson-Gough
et al., 2001, 2005; Roberts, 1991). Different styles of accountability
result in the construction of different expressions of identity in
terms of how an individual is seen by others and by self (Roberts,
1991). In professional service ?rms, accounting technologies
impact the construction of the identities of professional accoun-
tants. As techniques of surveillance, accounting assessments, ap-
praisals and professional training examinations for trainee
accountants can produce self-disciplined forms of identity (e.g.,
Grey, 1994). Monitoring practices and internal politics can desta-
bilize and reshape the professional identities of accounting man-
agers (Kornberger, Justesen, & Mouritsen, 2011). In accounting
?rms, the introduction of management techniques (e.g., manage-
ment by objectives (MBO), mentoring) ultimately aims to render
partners calculable. However, the implementation of these tech-
niques is not neutral but can produce con?ict that involves power
and resistance, which in turn affects identity construction
(Covaleski et al., 1998). Thus, accounting technologies signi?cantly
impact the way in which individuals maintain, reconstruct, and
manage their narrative of self-identity.
Accounting technologies can mediate changes in identity, mode
of operation and the reordering of manufacturing space (Miller &
O'Leary, 1994). An individual's sense of self-identity as indepen-
dent, knowledgeable agent of production, such as an operator,
shaped earlier at work can be contravened by the introduction of
new accounting measures (e.g., manufacturing ?rst-time-right;
Ezzamel & Willmott, 1998). The sense of identity may be dis-
rupted by the demands of a newly introduced accounting discipline
and con?rmed through resistance to, or revised to accommodate,
such discipline (Ezzamel et al., 2004).
Despite the centrality of identity to this stream of accounting
research, some social science studies question this focus, for
example by connecting it to alienation “One belongs either to one
group or another; one is either in or out; one acts principally in
support of a triumphalist identity or to protect an endangered one”
(Said, 1988: 54). Said's warning is targeted at conceptions of ‘stable
identity’ when it is in contest against the alienated ‘Other’, where
he sees ‘an incipient and unresolved tension’ (Said, 1988: 56),
which he calls ‘the logic of identity’ (Said, 1988: 55) that produces
denial, rejection, violence, assertions of cultural superiority, or
control. Other researchers have raised further concerns: identity
work is masculine because it produces an orderly world whereby a
solidi?ed sense of self is secured (Game, 1991); the entanglement of
binaries, for example mind and body, masculine and feminine,
renders identity impossible (Barad, 2007 quoted in Knights, 2015:
209), and preoccupation with identity undermines ethics (Hancock
& Tyler, 2001; Knights, 2015). We argue that the implications of
these arguments should be born in mind by future researchers.
3. The accounting gaze and gender producing processes
Lived experience in the gendered workspace is mediated by the
gaze: the behaviour, performance, bodies, and dress codes of em-
ployees are observed and scrutinized by others. Foucault (1977) has
underscored the importance of the gaze not simply as something
that one has or uses, but as the relationship into which a subject
enters. The gaze is a self-regulating technology of power/knowl-
edge: it is self-regulating because individuals react to the expec-
tations of the gaze, for example through compliance or resistance,
and the gaze is a product of power/knowledge relations. As L€ ow
(2006: 121) argues: “the genderization of spaces is effected
through the organization of perceptions, and in particular of gazes
and the body techniques that go along with them.” Foucault (1977)
has drawn attention to the power of the statistical mark in stand-
ardising and normalising the size of the human body, and Jeacle
(2003) notes how overhead allocations related to female garment
alteration had a strong in?uence upon the construction of the
statistical standard body size. Yet, as Knights (2015: 203) warns, we
have to be mindful of the danger of assuming passive con-
ceptualisation of the female body, whereby it is seen as simply
submitting to “the discourses that govern and discipline [its] or-
ganization and regulation through speci?c power/knowledge
relations.”
How accounting technologies might function as a gaze, espe-
cially in situations of management at a distance (Robson, 1992)?
Accounting constructs visibility and new ways of seeing via the
quanti?cation of human and organizational performance (Morgan
& Willmott, 1993). Ways of seeing are simultaneously ways of not
seeing (Poggi, 1965: 284). To understand the accounting gaze, two
complementary attributes of seeing (or not seeing) should be
acknowledged: commission and omission. Both attributes are the
product of technical ability (What can the gaze see?), and interest
and intentionality (What does the gaze want to see?) The ac-
counting gaze may be aware or unaware of its gender blindness.
What the accounting gaze fails to see, either intentionally or un-
intentionally, can strongly impact the way we ‘do gender’ and also
howidentity is reframed and reconstituted at work. The manner by
which the accounting gaze partitions the workspace impacts the
designations of spaces for men and women which affects the
construction of identity. Thus, identity construction and gender
performance are mediated by how the accounting gaze operates.
Below, we extend this by focussing upon the role of accounting in
gendering processes.
3.1. Accounting and gendering processes at work
Acker (1990: 146e147) proposes ?ve interacting processes in
which gendering occurs in organizations. This scheme is
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Please cite this article in press as: Carmona, S., & Ezzamel, M., Accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace, Accounting,
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recognized to have heuristic value (Dye &Mills, 2012), and we use it
to illustrate the potential for expanding the accounting research
agenda rather than to claim its superiority over other studies of
gendering processes. These process are: gendering practices/
structures, gendering cultures, gendering interactions, internal
gender constructions, and creation of gendered social structures.
These are discussed below.
3.1.1. Gendering practices/structures: accounting and spacings as
constructors of gender divisions
The construction of divisions along lines of gender connects to
the notion of spacings. Spacings are ways by which a space is par-
titioned according to certain priorities; they are demarcations of
labour, of sanctioned behaviour, of positions in physical space, and
of power. Accounting technologies divide and demarcate space into
new con?gurations that obey accounting priorities (e.g., costing
and control). The use of accounting spacings to demarcate speci?c
spaces could create divisions among different classes of employees,
for example where the highest positions are allocated to men and
rarely to women (Sorenson, 1984).
These spacings and the demarcations they produce are not
gender-neutral. The physical partitioning of space produces zones
where men and women do gender and where their reciprocal
positioning in relation to each other is played out. The materiality of
the workplace renders it a ‘space that matters’ (Tyler & Cohen,
2010), where women may defer to masculine authority (Young,
2005). As spaces that matter, workplaces de?ne subjects' lived
experience, where women may feel that their femininity is inferior
and de?cient to masculinity (McDowell &Court, 1994) and, we add,
men may feel the reverse.
3.1.2. Gendering cultures: accounting, symbols/images and gender
divisions
This process concerns the construction of symbols and images
that underpin, represent, reinforce or oppose gender divisions at
work (see Dale & Burrell, 2008). Acker (1990: 146) notes that
gendering cultures refer to “…many sources or forms in language,
ideology, popular and high culture, dress, the press, television”, and
we add accounting vocabulary and symbols/images. As ‘the lan-
guage of business’, accounting vocabulary and images may re-
present, reinforce and underpin widely-practised gender di-
visions. The web is full of images and symbols of accounting, many
of which create gender divisions by showing men as the money-
getters, the cool, rational decision makers, with women cast in
supporting roles. These symbols cannot be dismissed as gender-
neutral. Their existence in the public domain is of signi?cance as
cultural expressions of favoured gender stereotypes. Annual reports
are value-laden statements (Graves, Flesher, & Jordan, 1996; Tinker
& Neimark, 1987), and can contain images and vocabulary that
af?rm widely-held cultural expressions of gender (Davison, 2007).
Haynes (2013) provides examples of sexual symbolism in organi-
zational culture and howthis impacts gendered identity formation.
However, we extend our concern to all forms of accounting sym-
bolism that create or reaf?rm gender divisions (Benschop &
Meihuizen, 2002).
3.1.3. Gendering interactions: accounting and gendering processes
The processes that produce gendered social structures at work
are interactions between individuals, women and men, women and
women, men and men, and the patterns that enact domination and
submission. Furthermore, Acker (1990) notes that gender differ-
ences occur in taking turns, agenda setting, and interruptions
which recreate gender divisions at work. Accounting ?gures used in
annual performance evaluation meetings play a signi?cant role in
interactions between individuals, and if they emphasize incisive,
rational, decision making and ruthless pursuit of ef?ciency they
will reproduce masculine attributes. Also, accounting technologies
are central to everyday organizational practices, conversations and
other interactions (e.g., monthly forecasts) among employees. Lived
experience in the gendered workplace is thus inseparable from the
accounting technologies used to co-ordinate, evaluate, and reward
or penalise performance at work.
3.1.4. Internal gender constructions: accounting, gender processes
and the construction of gendered identity
This process includes awareness of the three processes dis-
cussed above as well as internal mental work of individuals to
understand the organization's gendered structure and the demands
and opportunities for gender-appropriate behaviour (Acker, 1992:
253). In turn, this is manifest in the choice of work, dress style at
work, the use of language, and the presentation of self as a
gendered person. For example, while ?exible working is available
to both men and women, most of those who opt for it are women,
given their society-sanctioned domestic roles (Kornberger et al.,
2010). Such work initiatives are gender producing processes that
construct men's and women's identities differently. Jonnergard,
Stafsudd and Elg (2010) report that even in the early stages of li-
cenced Swedish auditors, there were notable differences in per-
formance evaluation between women and men in career ambitions
and expectations and in intentions to leave the audit industry; men
focused on what was evaluated while women emphasized who did
the evaluation and how. Gendered dress code at work impacts the
construction of gendered identity; for example, women are
frowned upon when dressed conservatively (Kamla, 2012, 2014).
These processes produce gendered identities as men and women
engage in reciprocal adjustments while performing their gender at
work.
3.1.5. Accounting and the creation of gendered social structures
Gender is implicated in the process through which social
structures are created and conceptualized (Acker, 1990: 147), and in
the assumptions and practices (organizational logics) that underpin
work organization and action (Clegg & Dunkerley, 1980). Organi-
zational logics are manifest in organizational procedures, such as
work rules, employment contracts, job evaluation schemes,
managerial directives, and performance evaluation. Previous
research has examined the role of accounting logics in shaping
organizational action. Broadbent (1998) argues that accounting
logics exclude feminist values and, drawing on Habermas' ideal
speech acts, proposes the incorporation of these values. Further,
accounting logics impact lived experience at work (Ezzamel,
Robson, & Stapleton, 2012), for example by supplanting profes-
sional values and norms of conduct with market logics.
In summary, gender is not about human biological attributes but
a performance; men and women do gender. Gendering processes
interact with each other; for example, accounting technologies
demarcate spaces as part of organizational structure (e.g., re-
sponsibility centres) which in turn impact individual interactions
and gender performance through performance indicators. Gender
performance and identity construction are connected, and the
workplace is a material space where gendered identity is con-
structed. Accounting plays key roles in this context. Accounting is
gendered when it re?ects cultural gender divisions and reaf?rms
and perpetuates these divisions, which ultimately re?ect instances
of power and domination. Accounting technologies are gendering
by imposing their logics on the demarcation of workspace, and
through the introduction of performance measures, ways of
reporting, and reward systems. With this theoretical understand-
ing, the next section provides an overview of some important
studies of accounting and the gendered workplace.
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Please cite this article in press as: Carmona, S., & Ezzamel, M., Accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace, Accounting,
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4. Accounting and gendered space: an overview
Research in professional ?rms has examined how gender
domination is reproduced; how the professional identity of female
accountants is constructed (Haynes, 2008; Kirkham & Loft, 1993);
how gender relations are embedded (Anderson-Gough et al.,
2005); how female accountants are deskilled (Cooper & Taylor,
2000); how the recon?guration of work is gendered through, for
example, the introduction of ?exible working (Kornberger et al.,
2010), how sexual harassment occurs (Hammond, 1997; Haynes,
2013), and how the masculine connotation of ?nancial reports
thwarts a more diverse representation of gender in organizations
(Benschop & Meihuizen, 2002). In this section, we discuss exam-
ples of the extant research on accounting and gendered space in a
variety of settings: the household, the private/public divide, the
accounting profession, and manufacturing.
4.1. Professions and gendered workplace
4.1.1. The household as a professional workplace
Accounting has been used to emphasize the professional char-
acter of domestic labour in the household while deemphasizing its
arduous nature, with public space earmarked as a privileged
workplace for men. Walker (2003) shows that in the early 20th
century in the UK and USA, the household was constructed as a
professional domain for female domestic work dubbed as house-
hold engineering. Time and motion technologies measured and
recorded feminine housework: these technologies included func-
tional charts, process charts, scorecards, motion pictures, and
photography, supported by detailed bookkeeping. These technol-
ogies were intended to eliminate ‘waste’; they institutionalised
male domination, con?ned women in the domestic sphere, and
quanti?ed the performance of women at home.
Time and motion technologies are not only about measuring and
controlling time, they also entail measuring and controlling space.
Examples cited in Walker's paper include charts for cooking three
eggs, routing materials, daily schedules, the spatial movements of a
female ‘household engineer’ doing kitchenwork in a typical English
kitchen (calculated as an aggregate of 350 feet), and a spatially
designed kitchenwhereby the necessary movements are calculated
as being no more than 34 feet. For the professionalization of the
household to appear attractive, women were encouraged to use
advanced of?ce systems and businesslike methods in doing
household accounting, and to demarcate a space at home as their
of?ce. The household was recon?gured as a ‘glori?ed’ space for
female work, a ‘space that matters’ where gender performance was
enacted and societal norms produced by gender discourse (Tyler &
Cohen, 2010).
The power of this spatial discourse should not be under-
estimated; it construed the household as a new imaginative
working space (Said, 1978) for ‘female engineers’; and it framed
women's work and their identities within that space. This discourse
can be seen to produce the ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ (Foucault, 1977) di-
visions via the demarcation of space. This technology of spacing
and its associated symbols, we argue, was a gender producing
process (Acker, 1990); it constructed biological gender divisions,
impacted the choice of ‘work space’ and self-perceptions, and
created a pattern of female domination by males. For women, the
household was the space for arduous work monitored by time and
motion studies and the accounting gaze; for men, it was the space
for relaxation and leisure after doing ‘real’ work in the public
sphere. This spatial demarcation underpinned the fabrication of
gendered identity; an economy invested in opposites: female vs.
male (Said, 1978). The household became an arena where a poetics
and a politics of space were invested in this gendered discourse on
the roles of men and women.
4.1.2. Gendered private and public space
Discourse on gendered workplace is in?uenced by culturally-
driven norms, for example dress code is a form of presentation of
self (Acker, 1990). Kamla (2012, 2014),
3
reports that Syrian women
accountants wore the hijab (Arabic head dress) at work to comply
with religious beliefs and societal expectations, to gain men's
respect, and to show cultural resistance to Western consumerism.
Wearing the hijab was an element of identity construction and
gender performance at work. Initially, how women dressed was
unimportant because the Syrian accountancy profession was
considered an extension of the public sector, but as the accountancy
profession began to be run like the private sector, female accoun-
tants were expected to followa dress code that complied with male
expectations, and were frowned upon when they wore the hijab.
Thus, the hijab became a symbol that constructed gender divisions
at work (Acker, 1990).
Kamla (2014) examines how Syrian women and men accoun-
tants are associated with private and public space respectively.
When women had access to public space, their access was shaped
by how men acted in that space: “The repercussions of the
gendered space dichotomy are multi-faceted and far-reaching: they
not only associate the public space with the outside/exterior and
the private space with the inside/interior, but ‘they also imply that
the outside is the place of power where the social norms are pro-
duced and the inside is the place where this power is exercised’”
(Kamla, 2014: 612). This technology of spacing is a gender pro-
ducing process (Acker, 1990). Power thus objecti?es not only space
but also subjects.
The reported lived experience of Syrian women accountants at
work was tainted by their feeling that they were occupying, indeed
‘violating’, male public space; women were in public space but it
was men's domain (see also Young, 2005). Thus, women accoun-
tants felt under pressure to prove their worth as professionals, so
for them the poetics of space had negative connotations (Said,
1978). Even when occupying senior positions, women felt that
they were constantly under the male gaze that scrutinised how
they worked and whether they deserved to be in ‘men's’ space.
Such expectations of how women are assumed to perform their
gendered identity (Butler, 1988) can transform workspaces into
private spaces infused with power/knowledge issues which pro-
duce/reaf?rm gender divisions.
4.1.3. Towards equitable workplaces in the accounting profession?
Kornberger et al. (2010) examined a gender initiative by the CEO
of one of the Big Four accounting ?rms (Sky, a pseudonym) aimed at
“creating the best professional workplace for women”, promoting
‘talented women’, reducing their turnover and increasing their
number in senior positions. The initiative had several programs
including ?exible work which was considered the centrepiece of
this initiative. Although aimed at men and women, ?exible work is
more favourable to women, especially those with families. How-
ever, the implementation of the program resulted in reinforcing
3
Kamla's (2012, 2014) ?ndings about gendered private and public space have
parallels in the organisation theory literature. McDowell and Court (1994) report
that in UK merchant banking, professional workers, for example traders and
dealers, were represented differently in the workplace: “women's con?nement to a
female body-which on the trading ?oor and in the dealing rooms, is considered to
be the wrong body-marks them out as inferior. Power, sexuality, desire, and mas-
culinity combine to construct femininity as de?cient (McDowell & Court, 1994:
737e739). In contrast, in representing men, “there is an emphasis on the ‘natural’
characteristics of successful traders and dealers, and on the unity, rather than the
dualism, of mind and body”.
S. Carmona, M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society xxx (2015) 1e8 5
Please cite this article in press as: Carmona, S., & Ezzamel, M., Accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace, Accounting,
Organizations and Society (2015),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2015.11.004
“extant gender barriers” (Kornberger et al., 2010: 781). So what
went wrong? Sky's pre-existing culture equated being in of?ce with
effective performance, a view that inhibited women from realising
the potential of ?exible working. Being seen in the of?ce was
equated with improving ?rm performance, and the reverse
otherwise.
The space experienced by women who opted for ?exible work
was one where their careers were undermined, their work not
taken seriously, and their experience impoverished, a negative
poetics of space. It was also a workplace where in performing their
gender (Butler, 1988), women contrasted their identities in contest
with those of two Others (Said, 1978). First, the CEO and his senior
colleagues as those who allocate audit engagements, and observe,
assess and reward female work. Secondly, those not on ?exible
working (mainly men) and the privileges they enjoyed (e.g.,
attracting large and prestigious audit engagements). In sum, gender
issues in Sky were considered important only when they related to
business success, and the initiative targeted only ‘talented women’
not all women. So ironically, rather than resolving gender divisions,
the initiative became a gender producing process (Acker, 1990).
4.1.4. Gendered identity in manufacturing space
Knights and Collinson (1987) studied gendered identity on the
shop?oor in an all-male manual workers' factory. In this setting, a
“macho” discourse was developed based on men's celebration of
having an exclusive preserve to be involved in dirty, physical pro-
duction activities. These men developed a masculine identity that
distinguished them from women who were constituted as inca-
pable of grasping the realities of production. Knights and Collinson
(1987: 460) underscore the dearth of alternative discourses which
might counter the ideology of gendered identity: “the physical
‘tough’ and often dirty nature of the work and the aggressive, albeit
joking, way in which the men relate to one another simply re?ects
and reinforces prevailing “macho” discourses. In so far as women
enter this discourse they do so only as objecti?ed images of male
sexual aggression in the numerous female pin-ups plastered
around the workstations.”
Knights and Collinson explain this “macho” discourse as male
workers' reaction to their subordination to the control regime in
the factory; the rigid discipline of time, space, work-pace, and
material rewards supported by surveillance technologies including
accounting. A “macho” discourse invokes imagery of independence,
masculine power, and sexual domination, all are attributes
assumed to counter men's subordination to surveillance regimes.
The men refrained from resisting a ?nancial initiative to cut wages
and to signi?cantly reduce their headcount despite their mistrust
and scepticism over the initiative's validity. Resisting this initiative
would have implied the men's dependence on the company to
support their livelihood, which is inconsistent with their masculine
identity (Knights & Collinson, 1987: 465). The shop?oor was thus a
space where men performed their masculine gendered identity
(Butler, 1988), and where accounting calculations contributed to
the production of this gendered performance by being a technology
of subordination, surveillance and discipline (Foucault, 1977, 1980).
5. Discussion and suggestions for further research
Our examination of the role of accounting technologies in
creating/reaf?rming gender divisions at work in various organiza-
tional settings suggests that further accounting research is needed
to examine lived experience in the workplace and the construction
of gendered divisions at work (see Kirkham, 1992; Walker, 2008).
Furthermore, studying new organizational settings, for example
non-bureaucratic organizations, is likely to shed more light on
many of the issues discussed in this paper (Alvesson, 1998).
Paraphrasing Burrell and Hearn (1989), accounting research
adopting a gendered approach should enhance understanding of
the implementation and change of practices at work. This section
offers a number of possibilities for further research that would
address some of these limitations: a) how the human gaze pro-
duces gender divisions at work; b) how accounting functions as a
gaze and produces gender divisions at work; and c) how gendered
accounting technologies reaf?rm existing gender divisions.
Future research on the relationship between the accounting
gaze and the workplace could focus on contradictions in power/
knowledge relations and space demarcation (Gregory, 1995b). For
example, it would be instructive to analyse the context inwhich the
gendered identities of those who opt for ?exible working in
contrast to those who do not are formed, and howthis is affected by
tensions in power/knowledge and spatial relations. The recon?-
guration of the workplace by gender producing processes needs to
be further interrogated in order to reveal both intentional and
unconscious actions that produce gender divisions. Initiatives such
as ?exible working produce spatial con?gurations where some
spaces (e.g., working fromhome) are rendered less visible/valuable,
and may result in having unfavourable work portfolios, stricter
surveillance, and restricted chances of career progression
(Kornberger et al., 2010). Moreover, the household is increasingly
becoming not only a place for leisure and relaxation but also a space
for women to do arduous domestic work, imaginatively coded as
professional work (Walker, 2003). Further analyses of the dis-
courses and logics that produce these imaginative spaces and
associated gendered divisions, as well as their link to accounting
are needed.
Future research can explore these gendered divides in the
workspace, how workspaces overlap, interact, underpin and
contradict each other. For example, when working from home the
direct gaze of the superior is absent, so what alternative technol-
ogies of gazing are installed in its place? How do these gazing
technologies function? What impact do they have upon the con-
struction of gendered identities at home? How do men and women
professionals engage alternative gazing technologies? Also, in
producing new space con?gurations, the accounting gaze contrib-
utes to new poetics and politics of space: gendered workspaces
may be associated with happy or unhappy lived experiences that
may be contributed to by organizational politics, and future
research should explore these implications. Future studies could
also contribute to our understanding of the relationship between
accounting and the gendered workplace by teasing out the omis-
sions and commissions of the accounting gaze, exploring their
reasons, and articulating their impact. Said's (1978) emphasis on
intentionality underscores the importance of deliberate ways
through which new spaces are created in order to be dominated
and exploited. While this connects directly to the deliberate in-
tentions of the accounting gaze, it would be incorrect to ignore the
unintended consequences of this gaze.
Examination of the role of accounting technologies in the
gendered workspace holds promise for the theorization of ac-
counting. Future research could pay closer attention to how ac-
counting technologies are gendered, and analyse the mechanisms
and machinations through which gendering occurs and how this
impacts lived experience at work. Future research could examine
how accounting technologies in?uence the choice of work by men
and women, the adoption of speci?c dress codes, and the use of
gendered vocabulary and symbols.
One relevant issue is how accounting logics connect with
organizational logics and how this impacts gender production at
work (Acker, 1990). Future research could interrogate accounting
logics more fully, howthese logics re-present, underpin, shape, and
contradict organizational logics, especially those that impact
S. Carmona, M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society xxx (2015) 1e8 6
Please cite this article in press as: Carmona, S., & Ezzamel, M., Accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace, Accounting,
Organizations and Society (2015),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2015.11.004
gendered experience at work, and reveal their underlying as-
sumptions. Debates over competing organizational and accounting
logics can be highly political; organizational politics have been
conceptualized as masculine, irrational and emotional, creating a
workplace environment where women feel they are innocent in a
‘man's world’ (Davey, 2008: 658). Accounting language and tech-
niques have also been conceptualized as phallocentric (Shearer &
Arrington, 1993), although we would argue for a gendered, rather
than a feminist, conceptualization in order to overcome the limits
of binary distinctions of gender.
The role of accounting in diverse workspaces deserves further
attention. In the case of women doing arduous work in the
household, how is lived experience in such a space different, if any,
from working in an organization? What kind of gender producing
processes are at work and how are accounting technologies
implicated therein? How does the accounting gaze in the house-
hold constitute gendered identity and function as self-regulating
technology of power/knowledge? How different is the accounting
gaze fromthe ‘human gaze’, and what effect does this have on lived
experience at work in the household? What are the dynamics
through which contests of identity formation are shaped in the
household as a workplace? What is the scope for resistance to the
subordination, or indeed incarceration (Walker, 2003), of women in
the household?
In the case of public/private spacings, such as those examined by
Kamla (2012, 2014), research could focus on howpower/knowledge
relations function in public and private workplaces, and how they
act as gender producing processes. This research can be extended
further: What multiplicities of spacialities within and outwith the
private and the public spheres can be developed either to assert or
resist and even dismantle existing power/knowledge relations?
What constellations of power/knowledge and spatiality emerge in
the con?gurations of public and private workplaces? How do these
multiple spatial formations connect with each other and what is
their combined impact on gender divisions? What types of spacings
can be utilised not only to demarcate the boundaries between
private and public spaces, but also to specify the various spacialities
that emerge within each of these two domains? What sort of gaze is
the gaze that men and women are subjected to in gendered public
and private workplaces? How do subjects react to, feel objecti?ed
by, or resist, the expectations of the gaze in public and private
spaces? Howare accounting spacings productive of speci?c ways in
which men and women ‘do gender’ in the workplace and howdoes
this impact the way they view their gendered identities?
Studying gender in the accounting profession should be sensi-
tive to the intriguing question raised by Shearer and Arrington
(1993: 255): Should the research focus be upon how the profes-
sion might be reformed so that more women are admitted into it,
or, more radically, should research examine why women should
“desire assimilation into the selfsame institutions that sustain the
exclusionary practices that make assimilation an issue in the ?rst
place?” This question poses a major challenge for future research
and so far does not seem to have been headed. Moreover, exami-
nation of gendered space in the accountancy profession is culturally
sensitive. For example, Cooke and Xiao (2014) report that self-
perceived gender differences in the Chinese accountancy and
consultancy professions are informed by social conventions of
gender role, organizational practices, and personal preferences, all
producing gender divisions (Acker, 1990). These processes deserve
further examination whereby the impact of cultural values upon
the production of gendered identity and gender divisions at work
can be further illuminated. It would be instructive to interrogate
further the role of accounting technologies in supporting, or indeed
challenging, these cultural values and to tease out the attendant
implications for the performance of gendered identity at work.
Modern organizational arrangements provide further opportu-
nities to examine the role of accounting in the gendered workspace.
In manufacturing settings, the impact of post-fordism on the
con?guration of factory space and the relationship between ac-
counting and gendered lived experience have hardly been
researched (with Knights & Collinson, 1987 among the notable
exceptions). Post-fordism has had a profound impact on the
recon?guration, demarcation and organization of production space,
and has accelerated the rise of ?exible geographies of production
(Harvey, 1991). It has resulted in the subjectivisation of the work-
place as shortened production cycles have led to restructuring
spatial work layouts (Lash & Urry, 1994: 56). Various studies have
observed gender segregation in post-fordist production systems
(Bradley, 1998; Stanworth, 2000), and Odih (2003: 295) notes that
“Post-fordist labour processes are constituted through fundamental
antimonies between male and female experiences.” Thus, future
researchers could examine the role of accounting in gendering
post-fordist organizational space. Finally, as Alvesson (1998) notes,
most organizational and social research in gender has been con-
ducted in bureaucratic organizations. Recently founded ?rms (e.g.,
start-ups) featuring ?exibility and innovation offer more scope for
examining gendering processes in organizations. As accounting is
said to play a signi?cant role in the functioning of start-ups by
promoting growth and better decisions (Davila, Foster, & Jia, 2015),
it may also be strongly implicated in producing gendered work-
spaces in these organizations.
In this paper, we argue that individuals perform gender in an
imaginatively produced space for the purposes of control and
domination, and that accounting technologies play a signi?cant
role in the construction of gendered identity. Our review of the
extant literature suggests that we still have much to learn about the
relationship between accounting and gendered workspace. Further
investigations addressing accounting and gendered workspace
hold much promise for strengthening the theorization of the roles
of accounting in organizations and society.
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S. Carmona, M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society xxx (2015) 1e8 8
Please cite this article in press as: Carmona, S., & Ezzamel, M., Accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace, Accounting,
Organizations and Society (2015),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2015.11.004
doc_597834253.pdf
Research addressing how gendered space is experienced in the workplace, how accounting operates as a
gendered and gendering technology and how it impacts identity formation and gender performance is
sparse. This paper examines the relationship between accounting and lived experience in the gendered
workplace. We articulate a theoretical framing that examines gender producing processes and how
accounting functions as a gendering gaze at work. We then offer an overview of some key studies that
have examined accounting and gender in the workplace. We argue that the construction of gendered
identity in the workplace is about how individuals perform gender in an imaginatively produced space
for the purposes of control and domination. We identify three main themes that deserve the attention of
future researchers: a) how the human gaze produces gender divisions at work; b) how accounting
functions as a gaze and produces gender divisions in the workplace while noting the scope for resistance;
and c) how gendered accounting technologies reaffirm existing gender divisions
Accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace
*
Salvador Carmona
a
, Mahmoud Ezzamel
a, b, *
a
IE Business School, Madrid, Spain
b
Cardiff Business School, Cardiff, UK
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 23 June 2015
Accepted 16 November 2015
Available online xxx
Keywords:
Accounting
Gender performance
Identity
Workplace
Poetics of space
Politics of space
a b s t r a c t
Research addressing how gendered space is experienced in the workplace, how accounting operates as a
gendered and gendering technology and how it impacts identity formation and gender performance is
sparse. This paper examines the relationship between accounting and lived experience in the gendered
workplace. We articulate a theoretical framing that examines gender producing processes and how
accounting functions as a gendering gaze at work. We then offer an overview of some key studies that
have examined accounting and gender in the workplace. We argue that the construction of gendered
identity in the workplace is about how individuals perform gender in an imaginatively produced space
for the purposes of control and domination. We identify three main themes that deserve the attention of
future researchers: a) how the human gaze produces gender divisions at work; b) how accounting
functions as a gaze and produces gender divisions in the workplace while noting the scope for resistance;
and c) how gendered accounting technologies reaf?rm existing gender divisions.
Crown Copyright © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Within the social sciences, the study of gender performance and
identity in the workplace has received increasing attention (Acker,
1990; Butler, 2004). Accounting researchers are also examining the
role of accounting in gendered workplaces (Knights & Collinson,
1987; Walker, 2003). Gendered organizations, and gendered work-
places, feature a distinction between masculinity and femininity,
which reproduces gendered differences (Britton, 2000: 419). Ac-
counting technologies (calculations, vocabulary, symbols, images),
are signs that name, count and value objects, activities and in-
dividuals. These technologies intervene in the workplace and
impact performance, reward structures and the construction of
gender and identity. For example, in audit ?rms accounting mea-
sures shape the identity of trainees and partners (Anderson-Gough,
Grey, & Robson, 2001; Covaleski, Dirsmith, Heian, & Samuel, 1998).
Moreover, the introduction of accounting techniques of surveil-
lance can disrupt an individual's sense of self (Ezzamel & Willmott,
1998; Ezzamel, Willmott, & Worthington, 2004) and exert a
constitutive role in the construction of the workplace; for example,
by imposing its logic on space, by demarcating spaces into centres
of calculation, and by rendering these spaces visible (Carmona,
Ezzamel, & Guti errez, 2002; Miller & O'Leary, 1994). Researchers
have also examined the role of accounting technologies in rein-
forcing pre-existing views of gender and in the construction of new
gendered relations at work (Cooper & Taylor, 2000; Kornberger,
Carter, & Ross-Smith, 2010). Despite this wealth of research,
1
we
still have much to learn about the relationship between accounting
technologies and the gendered workplace (see Conlon, 2004: 464).
Accounting technologies are not gender-neutral but are both
gendering and gendered. They are gendering in the sense that they
produce gender divisions at work if, for example, performance
measures or reward structures create difference in the way women
and men are treated. In doing so, accounting technologies become
part of the wider processes of gendering, which are intrinsically
dynamic and changing over time. Accounting technologies are also
gendered to the extent that socially sanctioned divisions of roles
that differentiate between women and men on biological grounds,
for example, become incorporated in accounting vocabulary,
*
Paper presented at the 40th anniversary of Accounting, Organizations and So-
ciety Conference, London, 1e2 May 2015. We thank the participants of the Confer-
ence as well as Chris Chapman, David Cooper and Keith Robson for their
constructive comments. Financial support from project ECO2013-48393-P is
gratefully acknowledged.
* Corresponding author. Cardiff Business School, Cardiff, UK.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Carmona), [email protected].
uk, [email protected] (M. Ezzamel).
1
Special issues of accounting journals devoted to accounting and gender studies
include: Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1987, Vol. 12(1), and 1992, Vol. 17(3/
4); Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 1992, Vol. 5(3), and 2008, Vol.
21(4); Critical perspectives on Accounting, 1998, Vol. 9(3).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society
j ournal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ aoshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2015.11.004
0361-3682/Crown Copyright © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Accounting, Organizations and Society xxx (2015) 1e8
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Organizations and Society (2015),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2015.11.004
measures and images. Shearer and Arrington (1993: 254, 260)
argue that the construction of accounting as a social practice
privileges the phallic male body because it promotes phallocentric
conceptions of economics, value and ethics, and its discourse em-
beds a sexual politics. In this paper, we suggest that studying the
relationship between accounting and the construction of gendered
identity in the workplace is about how individuals ‘do gender’ or
performgender (Butler, 1988, 1993; West &Zimmerman, 1987) and
how they react to the gaze, as there is always room for freedom in
systems of domination (Foucault, 1977, 1996: 232). Lived experi-
ence and gender performance are manifestations of the materiality
of the workplace which, we argue, must be brought to the fore in
accounting research on the gendered workplace (Hammond &
Oakes, 1992; Knights, 2015). Despite numerous important studies
that have examined the relationship between accounting and
gender (e.g., Kirkham & Loft, 1993; Shearer & Arrington, 1993;
Anderson-Gough, Grey, & Robson, 2005), we note a paucity of
studies addressing the role of accounting in shaping lived experi-
ence in the gendered workplace as well as in constructing gendered
divisions at work. Furthermore, several organizational arenas
deserve the attention of future research, in particular non-
bureaucratic organizations (Alvesson, 1998).
Our examination of the extant literature suggests that future
accounting research could fruitfully focus on the following issues.
First, the relationship between the human gaze and the workplace,
and how this affects gender performance and impacts lived expe-
rience at work. Secondly, how accounting technologies function as
a gaze, either as a replacement to or in support of the human gaze,
and how this role becomes part of the gendering processes in or-
ganizations that underpin existing gender divisions or create new
ones. Thirdly, how accounting technologies themselves become
gendered by incorporating culturally-wide gender divisions.
Further research in these areas should help unravel how the
workplace becomes a gendered space through the mediating role of
accounting.
In the remainder of this paper, we ?rst examine the notion of the
gendered workplace. Drawing on Said's (1978) understanding of
imaginative geographies as sites of appropriation, domination and
contestation, we underscore the materiality, poetics (lived experi-
ence) and politics of the workplace. As identity construction is
crucial in gender performance, we elaborate how the constitution
of gendered identity is a highly spatialized contest that occurs in a
network of power/knowledge relations. This is followed by an ex-
amination of how accounting operates as a gazing and gender
producing technology. Next, we drawon some selective accounting
studies of accounting and gender at work to emphasize their con-
tributions. In the ?nal section we suggest ways in which previous
research can be extended in the future, with reference to under-
researched elements of our theoretical framework.
1. The Gendered workplace
2
The allocation of roles at work can be gendered because it is
connected to cultural norms concerning who occupies public space
(e.g., Kamla, 2012). The workplace is an important public space
where identity is constituted and gender is performed. As Halford
and Leonard (2006: 54) note “workplaces matter to the ways in
which we have to negotiate our gender identities.” The workplace is
a space where cultural images of gender are reproduced (Hearn &
Parkin, 1987); for example, gender segregation based on mascu-
linity is the product of organizational processes and practices
(Acker, 1990) which impact individuals and work organization
(Martin, 2006).
The workplace is an arena where employees experience space,
hence the expressions ‘lived space’, or ‘experienced space’ as Dale
and Burrell (2008: 10) argue, is “overlaid with ‘imaginary spaces’
whereby the material and the cultural are fused. It is the social
creation of space so that signs, images and symbols are made ma-
terial.” Dale and Burrell's reference to ‘imaginary spaces’ connects
with Said's (1978) notion of “imaginative geographies”, which are
discursive formations, tense constellations of power, knowledge
and spatiality (Gregory, 1995a: 29; see also Foucault, 1980: 70).
‘Discursive formations’ underscore the role of language in shaping
employees as subjects and the objects they deal with. Furthermore,
‘tense constellations’ emphasize the contested nature of the re-
lationships between power, knowledge and space. Imaginative
geographies accentuate the difference and separation of one space
from another, for example directors' of?ce space from the shop-
?oor, which may comprise contradictions within power/knowledge
and spatial relations (Gregory, 1995b). As an imaginative geogra-
phy, the workspace is intentionally produced in order to be domi-
nated, exploited and controlled, and it can produce gender
divisions that re?ect cultural norms; for example, meeting places
and dressing rooms for (female) cleaners are placed in less-
prominent locations.
‘Lived experience’ in the workplace connects with the ‘poetics of
space’ (Said, 1978: 55): “The objective space of a house -its corners,
corridors, cellar, rooms-is far less important than what poetically it
is endowed with, which is usually a quality with an imaginative or
?gurative value we can name and feel: thus a house may be
haunted, or homelike, or prisonlike, or magical.” The workplace can
impart similar experiences on those who occupy that space. Said
also notes that the poetics of space are simultaneously ‘politics of
space’; lived experience at work is in part impacted by organiza-
tional politics that in?uence how space is con?gured and allocated
between women and men.
The workplace and gender are reciprocally constitutive of each
other, rather than one of them having primacy over the other (L€ ow,
2006: 129e130). In researching the gendered workplace, the focus
should be on “howgender is constantly rede?ned and negotiated in
the everyday practices through which individuals interact; how
men and women ‘do gender’ and how they contribute to the con-
struction of gender identities” (Poggio, 2006: 225). Gender is thus
not an essentialist biological conceptualization of male and female;
men and women construct gender at work through processes of
reciprocal positioning (Gherardi & Poggio, 2001). The performance
of gender in the workplace is productive of new spaces where
power/knowledge relations are exercised (Gregson & Rose, 2000).
Some feminist studies contend that the workplace is typically
masculine (Young, 1990: 176; see also the papers reviewed by
Hammond & Oakes, 1992). McDowell and Court (1994) argue that
in the professional workplace femininity is constituted as inferior
and de?cient compared to masculinity. This problematic binary
distinction between men and women is part of a hegemonic
discourse in feminist studies, it is a distinction claimed to be typical
of women's ‘bounded spatiality’ e manifest in their apparent
deferral to masculine authority: ‘I'm here, but it's his space’ (Young,
2005: 191). Tyler and Cohen (2010: 178e179, 193) coin the term
‘spaces that matter’, after Butler's ‘bodies that matter’, to signal
spaces that are a materialization of the cultural norms according to
which gender performances are enacted, and through which
adherence to these norms is signi?ed. Such culturally based binary
distinctions must be problematized. Indeed, Knights (2015: 206)
stresses the need to shatter the masculine/feminine and mind/body
binaries in order to avoid reproducing them in life as well as in
research, arguing that dissolving boundaries “invites a collapsing of
2
While recognizing that space and time are intertwined, we focus on the
workplace as a gendered space.
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the terms so that they no longer sustain and reproduce the polar-
ities, which re?ect and reproduce the domination of discourses of
masculinity.”
2. Accounting and identity in the workplace
This section examines the relationship between accounting and
the partial construction of identity, given that gender performance
at work is inextricably connected to identity formation. Dale and
Burrell (2008: 106) note that “the situation and relations of the
workplace have been seen as the most signi?cant site of identity
construction in late capitalist society.” Inhabiting a workplace is a
negotiated practice that entails active identity work (Dale, 2005).
The social construction of identity consists of a performance or
fabrication whose aim is to produce a coherent identity (Butler,
1999; Gregory, 1995b). The workplace and identity are mutually
constitutive; subjects de?ne a particular space and a particular
space produces certain subjects (Lefebvre, 1991; Said, 1978). This
theorization of the workplace emphasizes its performative power
in the production of precarious and partial identity. Identity is
fabricated through the practice of designating a familiar space as
“ours” and an unfamiliar space as “theirs” (Said, 1978: 54), an
“economy of objects and identities” that parallels Foucault's (1977)
emphasis on the demarcation of speci?c spaces for ‘Us’ and for the
‘Other’. Thus, identity construction involves establishing opposites;
it is a contest in power relations over time involving individuals and
institutions. Identity thus is temporalized, spatialized, and consti-
tuted by techniques of disciplinary power.
Accounting logics can be used to design new spaces intended,
for example, for control or for improving the aesthetics of space.
The con?gurations of cost centres or pro?t centres are examples of
imaginative geographies created for accounting purposes that
mediate the construction of identity at work (Anderson-Gough
et al., 2001, 2005; Roberts, 1991). Different styles of accountability
result in the construction of different expressions of identity in
terms of how an individual is seen by others and by self (Roberts,
1991). In professional service ?rms, accounting technologies
impact the construction of the identities of professional accoun-
tants. As techniques of surveillance, accounting assessments, ap-
praisals and professional training examinations for trainee
accountants can produce self-disciplined forms of identity (e.g.,
Grey, 1994). Monitoring practices and internal politics can desta-
bilize and reshape the professional identities of accounting man-
agers (Kornberger, Justesen, & Mouritsen, 2011). In accounting
?rms, the introduction of management techniques (e.g., manage-
ment by objectives (MBO), mentoring) ultimately aims to render
partners calculable. However, the implementation of these tech-
niques is not neutral but can produce con?ict that involves power
and resistance, which in turn affects identity construction
(Covaleski et al., 1998). Thus, accounting technologies signi?cantly
impact the way in which individuals maintain, reconstruct, and
manage their narrative of self-identity.
Accounting technologies can mediate changes in identity, mode
of operation and the reordering of manufacturing space (Miller &
O'Leary, 1994). An individual's sense of self-identity as indepen-
dent, knowledgeable agent of production, such as an operator,
shaped earlier at work can be contravened by the introduction of
new accounting measures (e.g., manufacturing ?rst-time-right;
Ezzamel & Willmott, 1998). The sense of identity may be dis-
rupted by the demands of a newly introduced accounting discipline
and con?rmed through resistance to, or revised to accommodate,
such discipline (Ezzamel et al., 2004).
Despite the centrality of identity to this stream of accounting
research, some social science studies question this focus, for
example by connecting it to alienation “One belongs either to one
group or another; one is either in or out; one acts principally in
support of a triumphalist identity or to protect an endangered one”
(Said, 1988: 54). Said's warning is targeted at conceptions of ‘stable
identity’ when it is in contest against the alienated ‘Other’, where
he sees ‘an incipient and unresolved tension’ (Said, 1988: 56),
which he calls ‘the logic of identity’ (Said, 1988: 55) that produces
denial, rejection, violence, assertions of cultural superiority, or
control. Other researchers have raised further concerns: identity
work is masculine because it produces an orderly world whereby a
solidi?ed sense of self is secured (Game, 1991); the entanglement of
binaries, for example mind and body, masculine and feminine,
renders identity impossible (Barad, 2007 quoted in Knights, 2015:
209), and preoccupation with identity undermines ethics (Hancock
& Tyler, 2001; Knights, 2015). We argue that the implications of
these arguments should be born in mind by future researchers.
3. The accounting gaze and gender producing processes
Lived experience in the gendered workspace is mediated by the
gaze: the behaviour, performance, bodies, and dress codes of em-
ployees are observed and scrutinized by others. Foucault (1977) has
underscored the importance of the gaze not simply as something
that one has or uses, but as the relationship into which a subject
enters. The gaze is a self-regulating technology of power/knowl-
edge: it is self-regulating because individuals react to the expec-
tations of the gaze, for example through compliance or resistance,
and the gaze is a product of power/knowledge relations. As L€ ow
(2006: 121) argues: “the genderization of spaces is effected
through the organization of perceptions, and in particular of gazes
and the body techniques that go along with them.” Foucault (1977)
has drawn attention to the power of the statistical mark in stand-
ardising and normalising the size of the human body, and Jeacle
(2003) notes how overhead allocations related to female garment
alteration had a strong in?uence upon the construction of the
statistical standard body size. Yet, as Knights (2015: 203) warns, we
have to be mindful of the danger of assuming passive con-
ceptualisation of the female body, whereby it is seen as simply
submitting to “the discourses that govern and discipline [its] or-
ganization and regulation through speci?c power/knowledge
relations.”
How accounting technologies might function as a gaze, espe-
cially in situations of management at a distance (Robson, 1992)?
Accounting constructs visibility and new ways of seeing via the
quanti?cation of human and organizational performance (Morgan
& Willmott, 1993). Ways of seeing are simultaneously ways of not
seeing (Poggi, 1965: 284). To understand the accounting gaze, two
complementary attributes of seeing (or not seeing) should be
acknowledged: commission and omission. Both attributes are the
product of technical ability (What can the gaze see?), and interest
and intentionality (What does the gaze want to see?) The ac-
counting gaze may be aware or unaware of its gender blindness.
What the accounting gaze fails to see, either intentionally or un-
intentionally, can strongly impact the way we ‘do gender’ and also
howidentity is reframed and reconstituted at work. The manner by
which the accounting gaze partitions the workspace impacts the
designations of spaces for men and women which affects the
construction of identity. Thus, identity construction and gender
performance are mediated by how the accounting gaze operates.
Below, we extend this by focussing upon the role of accounting in
gendering processes.
3.1. Accounting and gendering processes at work
Acker (1990: 146e147) proposes ?ve interacting processes in
which gendering occurs in organizations. This scheme is
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recognized to have heuristic value (Dye &Mills, 2012), and we use it
to illustrate the potential for expanding the accounting research
agenda rather than to claim its superiority over other studies of
gendering processes. These process are: gendering practices/
structures, gendering cultures, gendering interactions, internal
gender constructions, and creation of gendered social structures.
These are discussed below.
3.1.1. Gendering practices/structures: accounting and spacings as
constructors of gender divisions
The construction of divisions along lines of gender connects to
the notion of spacings. Spacings are ways by which a space is par-
titioned according to certain priorities; they are demarcations of
labour, of sanctioned behaviour, of positions in physical space, and
of power. Accounting technologies divide and demarcate space into
new con?gurations that obey accounting priorities (e.g., costing
and control). The use of accounting spacings to demarcate speci?c
spaces could create divisions among different classes of employees,
for example where the highest positions are allocated to men and
rarely to women (Sorenson, 1984).
These spacings and the demarcations they produce are not
gender-neutral. The physical partitioning of space produces zones
where men and women do gender and where their reciprocal
positioning in relation to each other is played out. The materiality of
the workplace renders it a ‘space that matters’ (Tyler & Cohen,
2010), where women may defer to masculine authority (Young,
2005). As spaces that matter, workplaces de?ne subjects' lived
experience, where women may feel that their femininity is inferior
and de?cient to masculinity (McDowell &Court, 1994) and, we add,
men may feel the reverse.
3.1.2. Gendering cultures: accounting, symbols/images and gender
divisions
This process concerns the construction of symbols and images
that underpin, represent, reinforce or oppose gender divisions at
work (see Dale & Burrell, 2008). Acker (1990: 146) notes that
gendering cultures refer to “…many sources or forms in language,
ideology, popular and high culture, dress, the press, television”, and
we add accounting vocabulary and symbols/images. As ‘the lan-
guage of business’, accounting vocabulary and images may re-
present, reinforce and underpin widely-practised gender di-
visions. The web is full of images and symbols of accounting, many
of which create gender divisions by showing men as the money-
getters, the cool, rational decision makers, with women cast in
supporting roles. These symbols cannot be dismissed as gender-
neutral. Their existence in the public domain is of signi?cance as
cultural expressions of favoured gender stereotypes. Annual reports
are value-laden statements (Graves, Flesher, & Jordan, 1996; Tinker
& Neimark, 1987), and can contain images and vocabulary that
af?rm widely-held cultural expressions of gender (Davison, 2007).
Haynes (2013) provides examples of sexual symbolism in organi-
zational culture and howthis impacts gendered identity formation.
However, we extend our concern to all forms of accounting sym-
bolism that create or reaf?rm gender divisions (Benschop &
Meihuizen, 2002).
3.1.3. Gendering interactions: accounting and gendering processes
The processes that produce gendered social structures at work
are interactions between individuals, women and men, women and
women, men and men, and the patterns that enact domination and
submission. Furthermore, Acker (1990) notes that gender differ-
ences occur in taking turns, agenda setting, and interruptions
which recreate gender divisions at work. Accounting ?gures used in
annual performance evaluation meetings play a signi?cant role in
interactions between individuals, and if they emphasize incisive,
rational, decision making and ruthless pursuit of ef?ciency they
will reproduce masculine attributes. Also, accounting technologies
are central to everyday organizational practices, conversations and
other interactions (e.g., monthly forecasts) among employees. Lived
experience in the gendered workplace is thus inseparable from the
accounting technologies used to co-ordinate, evaluate, and reward
or penalise performance at work.
3.1.4. Internal gender constructions: accounting, gender processes
and the construction of gendered identity
This process includes awareness of the three processes dis-
cussed above as well as internal mental work of individuals to
understand the organization's gendered structure and the demands
and opportunities for gender-appropriate behaviour (Acker, 1992:
253). In turn, this is manifest in the choice of work, dress style at
work, the use of language, and the presentation of self as a
gendered person. For example, while ?exible working is available
to both men and women, most of those who opt for it are women,
given their society-sanctioned domestic roles (Kornberger et al.,
2010). Such work initiatives are gender producing processes that
construct men's and women's identities differently. Jonnergard,
Stafsudd and Elg (2010) report that even in the early stages of li-
cenced Swedish auditors, there were notable differences in per-
formance evaluation between women and men in career ambitions
and expectations and in intentions to leave the audit industry; men
focused on what was evaluated while women emphasized who did
the evaluation and how. Gendered dress code at work impacts the
construction of gendered identity; for example, women are
frowned upon when dressed conservatively (Kamla, 2012, 2014).
These processes produce gendered identities as men and women
engage in reciprocal adjustments while performing their gender at
work.
3.1.5. Accounting and the creation of gendered social structures
Gender is implicated in the process through which social
structures are created and conceptualized (Acker, 1990: 147), and in
the assumptions and practices (organizational logics) that underpin
work organization and action (Clegg & Dunkerley, 1980). Organi-
zational logics are manifest in organizational procedures, such as
work rules, employment contracts, job evaluation schemes,
managerial directives, and performance evaluation. Previous
research has examined the role of accounting logics in shaping
organizational action. Broadbent (1998) argues that accounting
logics exclude feminist values and, drawing on Habermas' ideal
speech acts, proposes the incorporation of these values. Further,
accounting logics impact lived experience at work (Ezzamel,
Robson, & Stapleton, 2012), for example by supplanting profes-
sional values and norms of conduct with market logics.
In summary, gender is not about human biological attributes but
a performance; men and women do gender. Gendering processes
interact with each other; for example, accounting technologies
demarcate spaces as part of organizational structure (e.g., re-
sponsibility centres) which in turn impact individual interactions
and gender performance through performance indicators. Gender
performance and identity construction are connected, and the
workplace is a material space where gendered identity is con-
structed. Accounting plays key roles in this context. Accounting is
gendered when it re?ects cultural gender divisions and reaf?rms
and perpetuates these divisions, which ultimately re?ect instances
of power and domination. Accounting technologies are gendering
by imposing their logics on the demarcation of workspace, and
through the introduction of performance measures, ways of
reporting, and reward systems. With this theoretical understand-
ing, the next section provides an overview of some important
studies of accounting and the gendered workplace.
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4. Accounting and gendered space: an overview
Research in professional ?rms has examined how gender
domination is reproduced; how the professional identity of female
accountants is constructed (Haynes, 2008; Kirkham & Loft, 1993);
how gender relations are embedded (Anderson-Gough et al.,
2005); how female accountants are deskilled (Cooper & Taylor,
2000); how the recon?guration of work is gendered through, for
example, the introduction of ?exible working (Kornberger et al.,
2010), how sexual harassment occurs (Hammond, 1997; Haynes,
2013), and how the masculine connotation of ?nancial reports
thwarts a more diverse representation of gender in organizations
(Benschop & Meihuizen, 2002). In this section, we discuss exam-
ples of the extant research on accounting and gendered space in a
variety of settings: the household, the private/public divide, the
accounting profession, and manufacturing.
4.1. Professions and gendered workplace
4.1.1. The household as a professional workplace
Accounting has been used to emphasize the professional char-
acter of domestic labour in the household while deemphasizing its
arduous nature, with public space earmarked as a privileged
workplace for men. Walker (2003) shows that in the early 20th
century in the UK and USA, the household was constructed as a
professional domain for female domestic work dubbed as house-
hold engineering. Time and motion technologies measured and
recorded feminine housework: these technologies included func-
tional charts, process charts, scorecards, motion pictures, and
photography, supported by detailed bookkeeping. These technol-
ogies were intended to eliminate ‘waste’; they institutionalised
male domination, con?ned women in the domestic sphere, and
quanti?ed the performance of women at home.
Time and motion technologies are not only about measuring and
controlling time, they also entail measuring and controlling space.
Examples cited in Walker's paper include charts for cooking three
eggs, routing materials, daily schedules, the spatial movements of a
female ‘household engineer’ doing kitchenwork in a typical English
kitchen (calculated as an aggregate of 350 feet), and a spatially
designed kitchenwhereby the necessary movements are calculated
as being no more than 34 feet. For the professionalization of the
household to appear attractive, women were encouraged to use
advanced of?ce systems and businesslike methods in doing
household accounting, and to demarcate a space at home as their
of?ce. The household was recon?gured as a ‘glori?ed’ space for
female work, a ‘space that matters’ where gender performance was
enacted and societal norms produced by gender discourse (Tyler &
Cohen, 2010).
The power of this spatial discourse should not be under-
estimated; it construed the household as a new imaginative
working space (Said, 1978) for ‘female engineers’; and it framed
women's work and their identities within that space. This discourse
can be seen to produce the ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ (Foucault, 1977) di-
visions via the demarcation of space. This technology of spacing
and its associated symbols, we argue, was a gender producing
process (Acker, 1990); it constructed biological gender divisions,
impacted the choice of ‘work space’ and self-perceptions, and
created a pattern of female domination by males. For women, the
household was the space for arduous work monitored by time and
motion studies and the accounting gaze; for men, it was the space
for relaxation and leisure after doing ‘real’ work in the public
sphere. This spatial demarcation underpinned the fabrication of
gendered identity; an economy invested in opposites: female vs.
male (Said, 1978). The household became an arena where a poetics
and a politics of space were invested in this gendered discourse on
the roles of men and women.
4.1.2. Gendered private and public space
Discourse on gendered workplace is in?uenced by culturally-
driven norms, for example dress code is a form of presentation of
self (Acker, 1990). Kamla (2012, 2014),
3
reports that Syrian women
accountants wore the hijab (Arabic head dress) at work to comply
with religious beliefs and societal expectations, to gain men's
respect, and to show cultural resistance to Western consumerism.
Wearing the hijab was an element of identity construction and
gender performance at work. Initially, how women dressed was
unimportant because the Syrian accountancy profession was
considered an extension of the public sector, but as the accountancy
profession began to be run like the private sector, female accoun-
tants were expected to followa dress code that complied with male
expectations, and were frowned upon when they wore the hijab.
Thus, the hijab became a symbol that constructed gender divisions
at work (Acker, 1990).
Kamla (2014) examines how Syrian women and men accoun-
tants are associated with private and public space respectively.
When women had access to public space, their access was shaped
by how men acted in that space: “The repercussions of the
gendered space dichotomy are multi-faceted and far-reaching: they
not only associate the public space with the outside/exterior and
the private space with the inside/interior, but ‘they also imply that
the outside is the place of power where the social norms are pro-
duced and the inside is the place where this power is exercised’”
(Kamla, 2014: 612). This technology of spacing is a gender pro-
ducing process (Acker, 1990). Power thus objecti?es not only space
but also subjects.
The reported lived experience of Syrian women accountants at
work was tainted by their feeling that they were occupying, indeed
‘violating’, male public space; women were in public space but it
was men's domain (see also Young, 2005). Thus, women accoun-
tants felt under pressure to prove their worth as professionals, so
for them the poetics of space had negative connotations (Said,
1978). Even when occupying senior positions, women felt that
they were constantly under the male gaze that scrutinised how
they worked and whether they deserved to be in ‘men's’ space.
Such expectations of how women are assumed to perform their
gendered identity (Butler, 1988) can transform workspaces into
private spaces infused with power/knowledge issues which pro-
duce/reaf?rm gender divisions.
4.1.3. Towards equitable workplaces in the accounting profession?
Kornberger et al. (2010) examined a gender initiative by the CEO
of one of the Big Four accounting ?rms (Sky, a pseudonym) aimed at
“creating the best professional workplace for women”, promoting
‘talented women’, reducing their turnover and increasing their
number in senior positions. The initiative had several programs
including ?exible work which was considered the centrepiece of
this initiative. Although aimed at men and women, ?exible work is
more favourable to women, especially those with families. How-
ever, the implementation of the program resulted in reinforcing
3
Kamla's (2012, 2014) ?ndings about gendered private and public space have
parallels in the organisation theory literature. McDowell and Court (1994) report
that in UK merchant banking, professional workers, for example traders and
dealers, were represented differently in the workplace: “women's con?nement to a
female body-which on the trading ?oor and in the dealing rooms, is considered to
be the wrong body-marks them out as inferior. Power, sexuality, desire, and mas-
culinity combine to construct femininity as de?cient (McDowell & Court, 1994:
737e739). In contrast, in representing men, “there is an emphasis on the ‘natural’
characteristics of successful traders and dealers, and on the unity, rather than the
dualism, of mind and body”.
S. Carmona, M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society xxx (2015) 1e8 5
Please cite this article in press as: Carmona, S., & Ezzamel, M., Accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace, Accounting,
Organizations and Society (2015),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2015.11.004
“extant gender barriers” (Kornberger et al., 2010: 781). So what
went wrong? Sky's pre-existing culture equated being in of?ce with
effective performance, a view that inhibited women from realising
the potential of ?exible working. Being seen in the of?ce was
equated with improving ?rm performance, and the reverse
otherwise.
The space experienced by women who opted for ?exible work
was one where their careers were undermined, their work not
taken seriously, and their experience impoverished, a negative
poetics of space. It was also a workplace where in performing their
gender (Butler, 1988), women contrasted their identities in contest
with those of two Others (Said, 1978). First, the CEO and his senior
colleagues as those who allocate audit engagements, and observe,
assess and reward female work. Secondly, those not on ?exible
working (mainly men) and the privileges they enjoyed (e.g.,
attracting large and prestigious audit engagements). In sum, gender
issues in Sky were considered important only when they related to
business success, and the initiative targeted only ‘talented women’
not all women. So ironically, rather than resolving gender divisions,
the initiative became a gender producing process (Acker, 1990).
4.1.4. Gendered identity in manufacturing space
Knights and Collinson (1987) studied gendered identity on the
shop?oor in an all-male manual workers' factory. In this setting, a
“macho” discourse was developed based on men's celebration of
having an exclusive preserve to be involved in dirty, physical pro-
duction activities. These men developed a masculine identity that
distinguished them from women who were constituted as inca-
pable of grasping the realities of production. Knights and Collinson
(1987: 460) underscore the dearth of alternative discourses which
might counter the ideology of gendered identity: “the physical
‘tough’ and often dirty nature of the work and the aggressive, albeit
joking, way in which the men relate to one another simply re?ects
and reinforces prevailing “macho” discourses. In so far as women
enter this discourse they do so only as objecti?ed images of male
sexual aggression in the numerous female pin-ups plastered
around the workstations.”
Knights and Collinson explain this “macho” discourse as male
workers' reaction to their subordination to the control regime in
the factory; the rigid discipline of time, space, work-pace, and
material rewards supported by surveillance technologies including
accounting. A “macho” discourse invokes imagery of independence,
masculine power, and sexual domination, all are attributes
assumed to counter men's subordination to surveillance regimes.
The men refrained from resisting a ?nancial initiative to cut wages
and to signi?cantly reduce their headcount despite their mistrust
and scepticism over the initiative's validity. Resisting this initiative
would have implied the men's dependence on the company to
support their livelihood, which is inconsistent with their masculine
identity (Knights & Collinson, 1987: 465). The shop?oor was thus a
space where men performed their masculine gendered identity
(Butler, 1988), and where accounting calculations contributed to
the production of this gendered performance by being a technology
of subordination, surveillance and discipline (Foucault, 1977, 1980).
5. Discussion and suggestions for further research
Our examination of the role of accounting technologies in
creating/reaf?rming gender divisions at work in various organiza-
tional settings suggests that further accounting research is needed
to examine lived experience in the workplace and the construction
of gendered divisions at work (see Kirkham, 1992; Walker, 2008).
Furthermore, studying new organizational settings, for example
non-bureaucratic organizations, is likely to shed more light on
many of the issues discussed in this paper (Alvesson, 1998).
Paraphrasing Burrell and Hearn (1989), accounting research
adopting a gendered approach should enhance understanding of
the implementation and change of practices at work. This section
offers a number of possibilities for further research that would
address some of these limitations: a) how the human gaze pro-
duces gender divisions at work; b) how accounting functions as a
gaze and produces gender divisions at work; and c) how gendered
accounting technologies reaf?rm existing gender divisions.
Future research on the relationship between the accounting
gaze and the workplace could focus on contradictions in power/
knowledge relations and space demarcation (Gregory, 1995b). For
example, it would be instructive to analyse the context inwhich the
gendered identities of those who opt for ?exible working in
contrast to those who do not are formed, and howthis is affected by
tensions in power/knowledge and spatial relations. The recon?-
guration of the workplace by gender producing processes needs to
be further interrogated in order to reveal both intentional and
unconscious actions that produce gender divisions. Initiatives such
as ?exible working produce spatial con?gurations where some
spaces (e.g., working fromhome) are rendered less visible/valuable,
and may result in having unfavourable work portfolios, stricter
surveillance, and restricted chances of career progression
(Kornberger et al., 2010). Moreover, the household is increasingly
becoming not only a place for leisure and relaxation but also a space
for women to do arduous domestic work, imaginatively coded as
professional work (Walker, 2003). Further analyses of the dis-
courses and logics that produce these imaginative spaces and
associated gendered divisions, as well as their link to accounting
are needed.
Future research can explore these gendered divides in the
workspace, how workspaces overlap, interact, underpin and
contradict each other. For example, when working from home the
direct gaze of the superior is absent, so what alternative technol-
ogies of gazing are installed in its place? How do these gazing
technologies function? What impact do they have upon the con-
struction of gendered identities at home? How do men and women
professionals engage alternative gazing technologies? Also, in
producing new space con?gurations, the accounting gaze contrib-
utes to new poetics and politics of space: gendered workspaces
may be associated with happy or unhappy lived experiences that
may be contributed to by organizational politics, and future
research should explore these implications. Future studies could
also contribute to our understanding of the relationship between
accounting and the gendered workplace by teasing out the omis-
sions and commissions of the accounting gaze, exploring their
reasons, and articulating their impact. Said's (1978) emphasis on
intentionality underscores the importance of deliberate ways
through which new spaces are created in order to be dominated
and exploited. While this connects directly to the deliberate in-
tentions of the accounting gaze, it would be incorrect to ignore the
unintended consequences of this gaze.
Examination of the role of accounting technologies in the
gendered workspace holds promise for the theorization of ac-
counting. Future research could pay closer attention to how ac-
counting technologies are gendered, and analyse the mechanisms
and machinations through which gendering occurs and how this
impacts lived experience at work. Future research could examine
how accounting technologies in?uence the choice of work by men
and women, the adoption of speci?c dress codes, and the use of
gendered vocabulary and symbols.
One relevant issue is how accounting logics connect with
organizational logics and how this impacts gender production at
work (Acker, 1990). Future research could interrogate accounting
logics more fully, howthese logics re-present, underpin, shape, and
contradict organizational logics, especially those that impact
S. Carmona, M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society xxx (2015) 1e8 6
Please cite this article in press as: Carmona, S., & Ezzamel, M., Accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace, Accounting,
Organizations and Society (2015),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2015.11.004
gendered experience at work, and reveal their underlying as-
sumptions. Debates over competing organizational and accounting
logics can be highly political; organizational politics have been
conceptualized as masculine, irrational and emotional, creating a
workplace environment where women feel they are innocent in a
‘man's world’ (Davey, 2008: 658). Accounting language and tech-
niques have also been conceptualized as phallocentric (Shearer &
Arrington, 1993), although we would argue for a gendered, rather
than a feminist, conceptualization in order to overcome the limits
of binary distinctions of gender.
The role of accounting in diverse workspaces deserves further
attention. In the case of women doing arduous work in the
household, how is lived experience in such a space different, if any,
from working in an organization? What kind of gender producing
processes are at work and how are accounting technologies
implicated therein? How does the accounting gaze in the house-
hold constitute gendered identity and function as self-regulating
technology of power/knowledge? How different is the accounting
gaze fromthe ‘human gaze’, and what effect does this have on lived
experience at work in the household? What are the dynamics
through which contests of identity formation are shaped in the
household as a workplace? What is the scope for resistance to the
subordination, or indeed incarceration (Walker, 2003), of women in
the household?
In the case of public/private spacings, such as those examined by
Kamla (2012, 2014), research could focus on howpower/knowledge
relations function in public and private workplaces, and how they
act as gender producing processes. This research can be extended
further: What multiplicities of spacialities within and outwith the
private and the public spheres can be developed either to assert or
resist and even dismantle existing power/knowledge relations?
What constellations of power/knowledge and spatiality emerge in
the con?gurations of public and private workplaces? How do these
multiple spatial formations connect with each other and what is
their combined impact on gender divisions? What types of spacings
can be utilised not only to demarcate the boundaries between
private and public spaces, but also to specify the various spacialities
that emerge within each of these two domains? What sort of gaze is
the gaze that men and women are subjected to in gendered public
and private workplaces? How do subjects react to, feel objecti?ed
by, or resist, the expectations of the gaze in public and private
spaces? Howare accounting spacings productive of speci?c ways in
which men and women ‘do gender’ in the workplace and howdoes
this impact the way they view their gendered identities?
Studying gender in the accounting profession should be sensi-
tive to the intriguing question raised by Shearer and Arrington
(1993: 255): Should the research focus be upon how the profes-
sion might be reformed so that more women are admitted into it,
or, more radically, should research examine why women should
“desire assimilation into the selfsame institutions that sustain the
exclusionary practices that make assimilation an issue in the ?rst
place?” This question poses a major challenge for future research
and so far does not seem to have been headed. Moreover, exami-
nation of gendered space in the accountancy profession is culturally
sensitive. For example, Cooke and Xiao (2014) report that self-
perceived gender differences in the Chinese accountancy and
consultancy professions are informed by social conventions of
gender role, organizational practices, and personal preferences, all
producing gender divisions (Acker, 1990). These processes deserve
further examination whereby the impact of cultural values upon
the production of gendered identity and gender divisions at work
can be further illuminated. It would be instructive to interrogate
further the role of accounting technologies in supporting, or indeed
challenging, these cultural values and to tease out the attendant
implications for the performance of gendered identity at work.
Modern organizational arrangements provide further opportu-
nities to examine the role of accounting in the gendered workspace.
In manufacturing settings, the impact of post-fordism on the
con?guration of factory space and the relationship between ac-
counting and gendered lived experience have hardly been
researched (with Knights & Collinson, 1987 among the notable
exceptions). Post-fordism has had a profound impact on the
recon?guration, demarcation and organization of production space,
and has accelerated the rise of ?exible geographies of production
(Harvey, 1991). It has resulted in the subjectivisation of the work-
place as shortened production cycles have led to restructuring
spatial work layouts (Lash & Urry, 1994: 56). Various studies have
observed gender segregation in post-fordist production systems
(Bradley, 1998; Stanworth, 2000), and Odih (2003: 295) notes that
“Post-fordist labour processes are constituted through fundamental
antimonies between male and female experiences.” Thus, future
researchers could examine the role of accounting in gendering
post-fordist organizational space. Finally, as Alvesson (1998) notes,
most organizational and social research in gender has been con-
ducted in bureaucratic organizations. Recently founded ?rms (e.g.,
start-ups) featuring ?exibility and innovation offer more scope for
examining gendering processes in organizations. As accounting is
said to play a signi?cant role in the functioning of start-ups by
promoting growth and better decisions (Davila, Foster, & Jia, 2015),
it may also be strongly implicated in producing gendered work-
spaces in these organizations.
In this paper, we argue that individuals perform gender in an
imaginatively produced space for the purposes of control and
domination, and that accounting technologies play a signi?cant
role in the construction of gendered identity. Our review of the
extant literature suggests that we still have much to learn about the
relationship between accounting and gendered workspace. Further
investigations addressing accounting and gendered workspace
hold much promise for strengthening the theorization of the roles
of accounting in organizations and society.
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Please cite this article in press as: Carmona, S., & Ezzamel, M., Accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace, Accounting,
Organizations and Society (2015),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2015.11.004
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