Description
Advances towards egalitarianism in professional recruitment may be offset by processes of
occupational re-segregation. Drawing on gender theory this paper investigates horizontal
segregation in the UK insolvency profession, as revealed through the lived experiences of
female and male practitioners. It is shown that horizontal segregation pervades at different
levels of practice and is undergirded by various elements of gender essentialism. Physical
essentialism explains why insolvency practice has been traditionally gendered male. Interactional
essentialism combines with the management of work-life balance to define the
subfields of corporate and personal insolvency as masculine and feminine respectively.
Gender essentialism and occupational segregation in insolvency
practice
Yvonne Joyce
a
, Stephen P. Walker
b,?
a
University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School, Scotland, UK
b
University of Edinburgh Business School, Scotland, UK
a b s t r a c t
Advances towards egalitarianism in professional recruitment may be offset by processes of
occupational re-segregation. Drawing on gender theory this paper investigates horizontal
segregation in the UK insolvency profession, as revealed through the lived experiences of
female and male practitioners. It is shown that horizontal segregation pervades at different
levels of practice and is undergirded by various elements of gender essentialism. Physical
essentialism explains why insolvency practice has been traditionally gendered male. Inter-
actional essentialism combines with the management of work-life balance to de?ne the
sub?elds of corporate and personal insolvency as masculine and feminine respectively.
Gender essentialist assumptions also pervade the distribution of roles and the allocation
of work tasks. Networks are identi?ed as arenas for the reproduction and perpetuation
of occupational segregation. The ?ndings indicate the continuing potency of gender in
everyday professional life, the limitations of diversity-orientated policies and the complex-
ities of formulating transformative agendas.
Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
We had been appointed as Receivers to a company that ran
a pub in Dundee, so I arrived (as one does) unannounced
and waving the of?cial appointment document. I told the
director that the Receiver would henceforth make all
the decisions and asked him to brief me on the business.
He was not a happy bunny. He pinned me up against a
wall and punched the wall on either sides of my head
telling me that if I wasn’t ‘a ??????? woman’ he’d have
punched my lights out. My colleague had to run out of
the premises to call the police, as his staff tried to prevent
the phone being used (in the days before we all had
mobiles). I’ve never been so pleased to be a woman!
[Condick, 2009]
Following the achievement of gender balance in
recruitment to the UK accountancy profession, academic
investigation has shifted to other areas of concern. In par-
ticular, research has focussed on the glass ceiling and the
principal impediment to women’s career progression –
combining a vocation with domestic commitments
(Dambrin & Lambert, 2008; Gallhofer, Paisey, Roberts, &
Tarbert, 2011; Lupu, 2012). While work-life balance con-
tinues to dominate academic study and praxis, a number
of allied gender issues remain substantially unexplored.
Prominent among these, in the wake of the increasing
specialisation of professional service provision, is the
emergence and consolidation of ‘gendered occupational
niches’ (Crompton & Lyonette, 2011; Crompton &
Sanderson, 1986), and the potential ghettoisation of
women in particular areas of practice (Khalifa, 2004;
Roberts & Coutts, 1992). Our intention in this paper is
to augment the sparse literature on gender segregation
in accountancy by investigating its presence, and thehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2014.12.001
0361-3682/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
?
Corresponding author at: 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9JS, UK.
Tel.: +44 131 651 5543.
E-mail address: [email protected] (S.P. Walker).
Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
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j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ aos
micro-level processes which sustain it, in a specialist sub-
?eld – insolvency practice. We thereby seek to contribute
to understandings of the persistence of gender issues in
the accounting profession during the post-equal opportu-
nities, diversity-conscious era.
It is no surprise that the formation and embedding of
gendered niches in professional occupations should con-
stitute an important issue. Recent studies of individual
vocations have identi?ed processes of re-segregation
and the marginalisation of women in particular special-
isms. The considerable expansion in the number of
women entering general medical practice has been
accompanied by the construction of a feminised niche
centring on women’s health care and ‘emotion work’
(Brooks, 1998). Women physicians tend to congregate
in people-centred family practice, paediatrics, obstetrics
and gynaecology (Ku, 2011). In the female dominated
occupation of nursing, men tend to specialise in
higher-paid, impersonal, technologically sophisticated
specialisms while women gravitate towards roles associ-
ated with caring, nurturing and empathy (Snyder &
Green, 2008). With the achievement of numerical
domination in veterinary practice women have become
clustered in the lower-paid, emotionally charged ?eld
of companion animal medicine (dogs and cats)
rather than large animal practice (Irvine & Vermilya,
2010).
Concern about occupational ghettoization is rendered
all the more pressing by studies which indicate that the
increasing access of women to careers in management
has been accompanied by a sharp increase in gender
segregation and ‘the entrenchment of other forms of
inequality’ (Cohen, Huffman, & Knauer, 2009). In the law
it has been contended that the apparent progressivism
suggested by rapid numerical feminisation veils the man-
ner in which women solicitors are ‘relegated to the less
prestigious and lucrative areas of practice’ (such as fam-
ily, employment, housing and bene?ts law), due to the
persistence of ideologies of gender difference; and are
subject to discrimination in the everyday life of the
profession (Bolton & Muzio, 2007, p. 48). In the solicitor
profession it has been argued that while barriers to the
entry of women have been broken, new forms of internal
closure have been instituted to preserve male privilege,
rewards and dominance. It has been suggested that gen-
der segregation represents a form of intra occupational
polarisation designed to protect the professionalisation
project of the male elite (Bolton & Muzio, 2008; also
Crompton & Sanderson, 1990).
1
In the accounting profes-
sion Roberts and Coutts (1992) argued that the increasing
location of women in marginalised niches constituted a
response by patriarchal forces to the threat posed by the
advancing feminisation of accountancy. Understanding the
gendered processes that facilitated such outcomes becomes
a research priority if forms of internal exclusion are to be
countered.
2
It is also clear that women in the accounting profession
do not comprise an undifferentiated, homogeneous group.
Experiences can vary signi?cantly according to factors such
as occupational specialism and the nature of the organisa-
tion in which work is performed and careers are built.
Abstract data illustrating the advancing proportion of
female members of the major professional bodies (from
24% in 2000 to 34% in 2010 in the UK) (Professional
Oversight Board, 2011, pp. 14, 32), together with general-
ised commitments to diversity programmes, and specula-
tion that cracks are appearing in the glass ceiling (Altman
& Simpson, 2000; Gammie, Gammie, Matson, & Duncan,
2007; Monks & Barker, 1996), veil a multiplicity of life sto-
ries. Studies of accounting professionals have revealed that
glass ceilings are thicker in some places (audit and corpo-
rate recovery) than others (taxation) (Gammie & Gammie,
1995). Women still report that opportunities for advance-
ment are often constrained. Revealing their experiences
continues to be a key object of the research agenda on
accounting and gender, and a potential source of its radi-
calisation (Broadbent & Kirkham, 2008; Haynes, 2008).
Our intention in this paper is to reveal the segregative
experiences of senior practitioners through a micro-level
analysis of the traditionally male-dominated sub-?eld of
insolvency. The study offers a distinctive contribution in
its deployment of concepts of essentialism to explain the
allocation of men and women to particular specialisms,
roles and tasks (horizontal segregation). We argue that
essentialism, the assignment of individuals on the basis
of assumptions about distinctively male and female traits,
is especially discernible in micro-level interactions and is
present not only in the construction of gendered divisions
of labour but also in the con?guration of professional
networks.
Our ?ndings con?rm the ubiquity of gender biases on
the basis of essentialism and we contend that this has
implications for the formulation of ameliorative agendas.
Although commentators often suggest that the male dom-
ination of the highest occupational statuses (vertical segre-
gation) may be eroded by liberal egalitarian policies, we
contend that addressing horizontal segregation is likely
to demand more radical, transformative responses. We
also argue that essentialism poses philosophical dilemmas
for those seeking to address occupational segregation. In
particular, the current-day focus on diversity management
effectively legitimates the notion that ‘essential’ biological
and cultural differences exist between male and female
and between masculine and feminine. Diversity agendas
therefore emphasise the separate gender traits and
1
Likewise, histories of the accounting profession reveal how male
solutions to the prospect of the admission of women centred on decoupling
female practice and practitioners from the malestream (Walker, 2011).
2
It should be stated at this juncture that not all recent commentators
have observed the persistence of sex segregation in the accounting
profession. Crompton and Lyonette (2011) found little evidence of it.
However they conceded that the aggregate level of their data might explain
this. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that analytical categories founded on
location of employment – that is, ‘in practice’, ‘in business’, ‘in the public
sector’ – would capture gendered clustering in particular communities of
practice or the existence of multiple knowledge-based specialisms exem-
pli?ed in the departments of practicing ?rms.
42 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
identities that may help to sustain occupational ghettoiza-
tion (Kornberger, Carter, & Ross-Smith, 2010).
The paper is structured as follows. In the next section
our theoretical approach is elaborated. Here we explain
our use of gender theories of occupational segregation
and, in particular, our deployment of gender-essentialist
explanations for the horizontal segregation we observe.
Subsequent sections introduce the insolvency profession,
its gender composition and the methodology employed
in the study. We then turn our attention to the analysis
of horizontal segregation. It is shown that gender-based
occupational niches founded on essentialism pervades in
various strata of professional experience – from the tradi-
tional masculinisation of the vocation as a whole to the
construction of sub-specialisms in corporate and personal
insolvency, and to role determination and the allocation
of work tasks. Attention subsequently turns to the contem-
porary importance of networks. These are revealed as are-
nas for the reproduction and institutionalisation of gender
segregation on the basis of essentialist assumptions. The
conclusion addresses the implications of our ?ndings.
Theories of occupational segregation
Occupational segregation, the tendency for men and
women to concentrate in different industries and occupa-
tional categories, is generally accepted as pivotal to under-
standing gender inequality, particularly as manifested in
the pay gap, but also in the wider unequal distribution of
status and rewards (Hakim, 2004, p. 145). Occupational
segregation constitutes a pervasive and immutable feature
of contemporary socio-economic systems. According to
Anker (1997, p. 315) ‘Occupational segregation by sex is
extensive in every region, at all economic development
levels, under all political systems, and in diverse religious,
social and cultural environments. It is one of the most
important and enduring aspects of labour markets around
the world’.
Two types of occupational segregation are convention-
ally distinguished. Vertical segregation concerns male
domination of the higher echelons of occupational status
hierarchies, irrespective of sector. For example, men dom-
inate partnerships in professional service ?rms where the
elevation of women is prevented by glass ceilings and
sticky ?oors. This has been the principal focus of gender
studies of the accounting profession. By contrast, horizon-
tal segregation, which has received much less attention,
relates to the manner in which women predominate in
particular industries, occupations, jobs and roles (such as
hotels, retailing, nursing, clerical and secretarial work)
while men preponderate in others (such as construction,
engineering, mechanics and mining) (Hakim, 1979;
Walby, 1988, p. 2). Hence, whereas vertical segregation
concerns strati?cations of rank and prestige, horizontal
segregation focuses on ‘distributional inequalities’ across
occupational categories (Charles & Bradley, 2009).
Numerous theoretical explanations for the emergence
of occupational segregation have been developed, reprised
and critiqued by various authors (eg Anker, 1997;
Blackburn, Browne, Brooks, & Jarman, 2002; Walby,
1988). Anker (1997) identi?es three broad categories:
neo-classical and human capital theories, institutional
and labour market segmentation theories, and feminist or
gender theories. The ?rst of these posits that occupational
segregation is the outcome of the pursuit of free, econom-
ically rational behaviour by employers and workers. Segre-
gation arises because women may be constrained by
factors that limit their capacity to accumulate capital and
occupy superior vacant statuses. The second broad cate-
gory stresses the role of corporations and unions in recruit-
ment and remuneration, the segmented nature of labour
markets, and the encouragement of segregation by
employers in order to dissipate the power of labour.
According to Anker (1997), while they are insightful and
help explain the gender pay-gap, theories rooted in
economics offer inadequate explanations for occupational
segregation by sex. In particular, they exclude the cultural
and social factors that impact on the assignment of work-
ers to jobs and impede the accumulation of human capital
by women. Anker contends, therefore, that feminist or gen-
der theories, the third category, offer more compelling
explanations for occupational segregation. These theories
suggest that segregation by sex is a consequence of patriar-
chal structures, and of the relationships and practices
which advantage males in the competition for access to
high status occupations in the public world of work. The
same structures relegate women to lower status jobs or
assign them to the privatised realm of the domestic.
Gender theory emphasises the manner in which occu-
pations are ?lled not on the basis of free rational choices
but on whether their performance demands the possession
of feminine or masculine traits, or the exhibition of gender-
de?ned behaviour. Women tend to populate those occupa-
tions that align with stereotypical assumptions of their
attributes such as caring (nursing, social work), compe-
tence in the household (cleaner, dressmaker) and attrac-
tive physical appearance (receptionist, shop assistant).
Likewise, masculine stereotypes explain the dominance
of men in occupations associated with physical strength
and aggression. Gender theories of occupational segrega-
tion assert that jobs become ‘sex-typed’ and their male or
female composition tends to reinforce the gendered identi-
ties of those who occupy them. One reason why such the-
ories are so compelling is because they help to explain the
seemingly enduring character of occupational segregation.
Indeed, segregation by sex has proved remarkably resil-
ient over time and space (Jonung, 1998; Middleton, 1988;
Olson, 1990; Stainback & Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012; Watts
& Rich, 1993). A recent study for the European Commission
(Bettio & Verashchagina, 2009, p. 37) discovered that
although there were differences between member states,
gender segregation remained high in the EU and rates
had remained substantially unchanged since 1992. Others
have observed that the advancing participation of women
in the labour force and the decline of gender inequality
in other areas has been attended by an increase in sex seg-
regation so ‘spectacular’ that the modern-day occupational
structure has been described as ‘hypersegregated’ (Charles
& Grusky, 2004, pp. 3–4). Moreover, the limited progress
made towards occupational desegregation in recent years
has been implicated in the stalling of the ‘gender
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 43
revolution’ that commenced in the 1960s and witnessed
the movement of women into male dominated ?elds such
as the professions (England, 2010, 2011).
The resilience of occupational segregation and its
apparent recon?guration in the wake of equal opportuni-
ties movements has encouraged a revisiting of extant the-
orisations (Hakim, 2004, p. 145). Hakim (1991, 1995, 1998)
for example, articulated a much criticised ‘preference the-
ory’, supportive of neo-classical and human capital expla-
nations. She contended that occupational segregation was
not imposed on women but re?ected their life choices
and work orientations – their preferences for different
forms of labour market participation. Some women are
‘uncommitted’ and choose to pursue occupations that are
secondary to their prioritisation of home-centred responsi-
bilities. Others, the minority, are ‘committed’ and career-
centred. Hakim (1991, p. 110) controversially asserted that
women had effectively ‘colluded in their own imprison-
ment in unpaid work in the home and low-paid, low status
jobs in the workforce’. Goldin (2002) by contrast, articu-
lated a ‘pollution theory’. This posits that the increasing
admission of women to male dominated occupations is
perceived as diminishing masculine prestige. This elicits
segregative responses in the creation of male and female-
typed occupations, equal in pay but unequal in status.
Gender essentialism and horizontal segregation
More recently, explanations for the sex-typing of occu-
pations and the persistence of occupational ghettos and
niches have stressed the role of gender essentialism.
Stone (2004, p. 138) de?nes essentialism as follows: ‘Philo-
sophically, essentialism is the belief that things have
essential properties, properties that are necessary to those
things being what they are. Recontextualised within femi-
nism, essentialismbecomes the view that there are proper-
ties essential to women, in that any woman must
necessarily have those properties to be a woman at all’.
Those properties may be biologically constructed (associ-
ated with sex = female/male) or socially constructed (gen-
der = feminine/masculine). They have comprised potent
forces for assigning women to particular functions and
spheres, such as child rearing and the domestic. According
to some psychologists humans tend to seek the ‘essence’
from complex information and their conceptual systems
are attuned to identifying ‘essential’ differences (sex, skin
colour, body shape) as well as sources of commonality.
These ‘essences’ are powerful sources of universal attribu-
tion and categorisation. They are expressed in stereotyping
statements such as ‘all women are caring and empathetic’
and ‘all Africans have rhythm’ (Phillips, 2010).
The foremost proponents of gender essentialist expla-
nations for the persistence of occupational segregation
are Charles and Grusky (2004). In their prize-winning work
on 10 industrialised countries the authors attempted to
explain a paradox – although the modern age has been
characterised by liberal feminism, equal opportunity
reforms, anti-discrimination measures and increased gen-
der integration in the professions, many occupations
remain segregated. Evidently, occupational segregation
co-exists with egalitarianism and advances towards
desegregation appear to be accompanied by processes of
re-segregation. Charles and Grusky (2004, pp. 12–15)
argued that existing (particularly economic) theorisations
fail to explain these complexities. Consistent with the
aforementioned gender theories they contend that vertical
and horizontal segregation fundamentally re?ects cultural
ideologies. Vertical segregation is underpinned by the per-
sistent notion of male primacy; that is, the assumption that
men are more appropriate occupants of elevated statuses
associated with the exercise of power and authority. Hori-
zontal segregation is maintained via the logic of ‘gender
essentialism’, the alignment of prototypical feminine and
masculine traits to job and task requirements based on cul-
tural assumptions about innate gender differences (Charles
& Bradley, 2009).
Such gender-essentialism is deeply embedded, perpetu-
ated by processes of socialisation, is sustained by popular
culture and the media, and reinforced by everyday interac-
tions with signi?cant others such as parents and teachers.
It endures at the micro-level through cognitive processes
that encourage actions consistent with ‘pre-existing ste-
reotypes’ and a tendency to ‘ignore, discount, or forget evi-
dence that undermines them’ (Charles & Grusky, 2004, p.
15). Examples of the ‘generative mechanisms’ underlying
segregation include employers making (discriminatory)
decisions on the basis of internalised essentialist presump-
tions ‘that gender provides a useful signal of individual
capacities for particular lines of work’ (e.g. nurtur-
ing = female, physical strength = male) (Charles & Grusky,
2004, p. 309). Likewise, employees might express occupa-
tional preferences on the basis of sex-typed expectations
and self-evaluations. Hence, ‘By virtue of repeated telling,
the essentialist narrative takes on a force that shapes
labour market outcomes’, it becomes ubiquitous and self-
ful?lling (Levanon & Grusky, 2012).
Subsequent studies have af?rmed the resilience and
potency of gender-essentialist ideologies in forming the
aspirations, life experiences and identities that sustain hor-
izontal segregation (Charles & Bradley, 2009). The search
for reasons why segregation on the basis of sex has proved
so intransigent also led Levanon and Grusky (2012) to
explore the forms and extent of essentialism in the wake
of the ‘gender revolution’. The authors developed a model
that identi?es its female and male-advantaging forms.
They discovered that physical, cognitive and interactional
variants of essentialism explains the ‘vast majority’ of
occupational segregation and concluded that segregation
remains ‘so extreme’ because its essentialist foundations
are durable and co-exist with the seemingly antithetical
notion of egalitarianism.
In the current study horizontal occupational segrega-
tion in the insolvency profession is explored through a
gender, and a gender-essentialist, lens. While we do not
pretend to investigate the deeper social and cultural pro-
cesses which reproduce and perpetuate stereotypes about
female and male traits, or their manifestation in the
recruitment and promotion decisions of ?rms, we do seek
to explore how horizontal segregation is maintained by the
alignment of prototypical feminine and masculine charac-
teristics with speci?c roles and work tasks. Previous to
analysing the extent and forms of horizontal segregation
44 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
by sex, and the structures and practices that sustain it, we
offer some background on our focal occupational group,
the insolvency profession.
The insolvency profession
Although it occupies a relatively small proportion of the
accountancy populace in the UK, insolvency practice is a
highly signi?cant and distinctive sub-?eld. In 2011–12
the top 50 accounting ?rms generated total fee income of
£449 m from insolvency work (Accountancy Age Top
50 + 50, 2012).
3
In addition to its socio-economic conse-
quences for the casualties of business failures, a large-scale
corporate insolvency is associated with ‘big money owed,
and big fees charged by those trying to sort it out’ (Flood
& Skordaki, 1995, p. 5). Academic researchers have shown
how the engagement of accountants in insolvency practice
was of considerable importance to the professionalisation
of accountants in Britain (Napier & Noke, 1992; Walker,
1995, 2004a); how insolvency work contributed to the
emergence of the accounting stereotype (Bougen, 1994),
and is the arena in which jurisdictional interfaces with the
profession of law are most evident (Walker, 2004b).
Structure
The professional space in insolvency is inhabited by
accountants, lawyers and others. Insolvency professionals
may be employed within an accounting, law or specialist
business recovery ?rm. Although it is a sub-?eld populated
mainly by professional accountants, it also boasts separate
institutional structures and sub-specialisms that render
the organisational allegiances and identities of practitio-
ners both complex and intriguing (Flood & Skordaki,
1995, pp. 37–38).
In 2007 the insolvency industry employed 12,700 insol-
vency practitioners, assistant accountants and solicitors,
and administrative and other support staff (The Value of
the Insolvency Industry, 2008, p. 20).
4
Insolvency Practitio-
ners (IPs), the most senior members of the profession, repre-
sented 14% of this total. Since the passing of the Insolvency
Act, 1986 only authorised individuals may act as IPs and
accept formal insolvency appointments, that is, hold of?ce
as a liquidator, administrator, receiver, or trustee in a bank-
ruptcy or sequestration. In Great Britain seven Recognised
Professional Bodies (RPBs
5
) are responsible for 92% of the
authorisations of IPs. The remaining licenses to practice
are granted directly by the Secretary of State for Business,
Innovation and Skills (BIS) through The Insolvency Service
(an executive agency of BIS responsible for insolvency regu-
lation) (Guide to the Insolvency Service, 2010). The RPBs and
the Secretary of State together comprise the ‘authorising
bodies’. In order to achieve authorisation it is necessary for
the prospective IP to pass the examinations of the Joint
Insolvency Examination Board (JIEB) and gain practical
experience.
6
The number of IPs authorised by each authoris-
ing body is shown in Table 1.
7
As the data in Table 1 suggests, many IPs are quali?ed
accountants. In fact, in 2007 49% of IPs worked in account-
ing ?rms, 39% in specialist insolvency ?rms and 12% in law
and other ?rms (The Value of the Insolvency Industry, 2008,
p. 20). It is possible for an IP to be a member of an accoun-
tancy body and also an organisation representing insol-
vency practitioners, such as the Association of Business
Recovery Professionals (known as ‘R3’
8
).
Not all insolvency practitioners take formal appoint-
ments (and thereby assume the title administrator, recei-
ver, liquidator or trustee).
9
According to data published by
The Insolvency Service, of the 1715 IPs, 1329 (77%) take such
appointments (2011 Annual Review, 2012, p. 10). By far the
most numerous formal appointments relate to processes of
personal insolvency. In 2011 IPs were appointed to act in
49,056 Individual Voluntary Arrangements and 2702 bank-
ruptcies. Less numerous, but more complex and remunera-
tive, are corporate insolvency procedures. In 2011 IPs were
appointed in 12,734 liquidations, 2805 administrations,
Table 1
Authorised insolvency practitioners in Great Britain as at 1 January 2012.
Source: 2011 Annual Review (2012, p. 10).
Authorising bodies N %
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and
Wales
694 40
Insolvency Practitioners Association 511 30
Association of Chartered Certi?ed Accountants 164 9
Law Society of England and Wales 135 8
Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland 102 6
Secretary of State 66 4
Chartered Accountants Ireland 32 2
Law Society of Scotland 11 1
Total 1715 100
3
The total fee income of the top 50 ?rms from all sources during the
same period was £10.3bn.
4
A different basis of calculation generated an estimate of 10,000 in 2008
(The Value of the Insolvency Industry, 2010, pp. 5–6).
5
The seven RPBs are the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England
and Wales (ICAEW), Association of Chartered Certi?ed Accountants (ACCA),
Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), Chartered Accoun-
tants Ireland (CAI), Insolvency Practitioners’ Association (IPA), Law Society
(LS), Law Society of Scotland (LSS). Insolvency legislation is devolved in
Northern Ireland. There, The Law Society of Northern Ireland is also an RPB
and the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment Trade can also
issue licenses.
6
This is in addition to a ‘?t and proper person’ requirement. Other
credentials, which do not secure authorisation, are the ICAEW’s Certi?cate
of Insolvency (a precursor to studying for the JIEB examination) and the
IPA’s Certi?cate of Pro?ciency in Insolvency (for staff employed in
insolvency who do not necessarily aspire to become licensed practitioners)
(R3, Making a Career as an Insolvency Practitioner).
7
The trend in the number of authorised IPs is not suggestive of a rapidly
expanding profession. The total of 1715 identi?ed in Table 1 compares with
1998 in 1990. Concerns are periodically expressed about an ageing
practitioner populace and the desirability of ensuring that the occupation
is perceived as an attractive vocation to future generations (Editor., 2005).
8
R3 (rescue, recovery, renewal) is a private limited company by
guarantee and operates as a not for pro?t organisation (https://www.r3.or-
g.uk/aboutr3/). R3 undertakes a number of functions, including the
provision of training courses and conferences, lobbying on behalf of the
profession, facilitating member networks, the publication of a quarterly
magazine and the development of best practice standards.
9
For example, a small number of IPs conduct monitoring and compliance
work within RPBs. Further, ?rm policy may restrict of?ce holder positions
to a small number of senior-level employees.
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 45
1397 receiverships and 767 company voluntary arrange-
ments (2011 Annual Review, 2012, p. 21). IPs also receive
appointments that do not invoke formal insolvency proce-
dures. These include corporate rescues and reconstructions,
and offering advice to individuals and businesses in ?nancial
distress (R3, Making a Career as an Insolvency Practitioner).
The advent of the ‘rescue culture’ in Britain generated ‘a
more dynamic, creative role’ for the insolvency practitioner,
and shifted the professional’s identity from ‘corporate
undertaker’ to ‘problem solver’ (Flood & Skordaki, 1995, p.
iii; The Value of the Insolvency Industry, 2008, p. 28).
Work
For the purpose of contextualizing the study it is impor-
tant to describe the work tasks performed in insolvency
practice. Corporate insolvency frequently engages the IP
as an administrator or receiver who locates and takes con-
trol of assets, manages employees, determines whether to
continue to trade, and deals with administrative matters
and statutory compliance (R3., 2008, pp. 9–22). Once con-
trol has been taken of the insolvent company the IP may
seek a buyer for the concern, addresses valuation issues,
processes redundancy payments, determines employee
claims for wages, pursues debtors, liaises with key suppli-
ers, holds meetings with creditors, and prepares necessary
correspondence, forms and reports. As the insolvency pro-
gresses, tasks include reporting to the creditors, preparing
accounts and pursuing any legal claims. Where the com-
pany is to be wound-up, liquidation procedures also
involve accounts preparation, reporting to creditors,
chasing debts, making distributions and dealing with
administrative formalities. Practitioner ?rms also perform
corporate work beyond formal insolvency procedures, such
as conducting investigations on behalf of banks. This might
involve visits to the company, composing ?nancial state-
ments, and assessing the entity’s strategic risks, market
position and expected returns should it enter insolvency
processes.
In relation to personal insolvency the main procedures
involving the appointment of an IP in Scotland, the focal
site of this research, concern bankruptcies (sequestrations)
and trust deeds (R3, 2008, pp. 23–28). In relation to the for-
mer, the IP administers the insolvent estate as a Trustee in
Bankruptcy. The trustee ingathers the assets and applies
the proceeds of their disposal to pay the costs of managing
the bankruptcy and satisfy the creditors. This involves
arranging formal notices, interviewing the client-debtor,
gathering evidence of assets, liabilities and their values,
holding meetings with creditors, inviting claims from cred-
itors and distributing ingathered funds to them, keeping
records such as court orders and minutes of meetings,
and producing accounts for approval by the Accountant
in Bankruptcy. Trust deeds involve the appointment of an
IP as trustee in a voluntary arrangement between the
debtor and her/his creditors. Under the deed the debtor
transfers property to the trustee who manages it on behalf
of the creditors. S/he ingathers and realises the value of
assets, adjudicates creditor’s claims and makes distribu-
tions to them, and prepares a letter to discharge the debtor
when the process is complete.
Gender composition
The upper reaches of the professional hierarchy in
insolvency, as indicated by the achievement of licensed
IP status, is substantially male dominated. Appointment
takers in many of the insolvency departments of large
?rms are predominantly men. While women may success-
fully progress through the of?ce hierarchy comparatively
few become IPs. At the end of the twentieth century the
fact that the ‘insolvency club’ was almost exclusively male,
was identi?ed as a source of homogeneity in a vocation
otherwise characterised by fractured allegiances (Flood &
Skordaki, 1995).
In their survey of the occupation in 1995 Flood and
Skordaki (pp. i–ii, 14) observed that 95% of authorised
insolvency practitioners were men. Our analysis of mem-
bership data showed that the percentage of male IPs in
the UK remains very high at 85%. The number of women
taking the JIEB examination has been increasing in recent
years and the consequential shifting demographic is
expected to erode rates of vertical segregation in the
future. A study of the insolvency profession in 2007 noted
that although ‘the average insolvency practitioner is
46 years old, male and is the head of department or man-
ager’, one half of IPs aged under 35 were women (The
Value of the Insolvency Industry, 2008, p. 13).
10
Our analysis of membership data uncovered some vari-
ations in rates of male domination between the major
?rms operating in the ?eld. Whereas the proportion of
male IPs was 80%, or less, in ?rms such as Deloitte, Ernst
& Young and PKF, it was closer to 90% in KPMG, PwC and
RSM Tenon. At Begbies Traynor, the largest employing ?rm
of IPs, the proportion was 87% and at Grant Thornton it was
as high as 95%. There was also some variation between the
several RPBs. Whereas 81% of IPs authorised by the ACCA
were men, the proportion was 91% for ICAS. In the focal site
of the study 92% of IPs authorised by ICAS and employed in
Big 4 ?rms were male as were 90% of IPs employed in non-
Big 4 ?rms. If attention is turned to IP members of R3
located in Scotland (irrespective of RPB) the extent of male
domination was marginally less, at 85%.
As in accountancy, lower occupational statuses within
the insolvency profession are predominantly ?lled by
women (Anderson-Gough, Grey, & Robson, 2005; Cooper
& Taylor, 2000). Their employment in administrative and
supportive roles often results in insolvency departments
and client teams mainly comprising women. In everyday
practice this numerical domination often serves to veil
and deproblematise the extent of male occupancy of the
senior statuses in the vocation (R3., 2014).
Methodology
Consistent with previous studies of gender and organi-
sational practices in accounting, the study is performed at
the micro-level (Anderson-Gough et al., 2005; Covaleski,
Dirsmith, Heian, & Samuel, 1998; Kornberger et al.,
2010). Our focus is on exploring commonplace practices
10
It should also be noted that among members of R3 who were not IPs
24% were women.
46 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
in a single occupational group. There are several reasons
for this orientation. Firstly, we are responsive to the notion
that gender should be investigated ‘as a routine accom-
plishment embedded in everyday interaction’ (West &
Zimmerman, 1987, p. 125). The operation of the mundane
microprocesses through which individuals ‘do gender’
offers insights to the ways in which gender hierarchies
and identities are created and sustained (Martin, 2001;
Poggio, 2006). Of particular importance to our investiga-
tion is the assumption that essentialist notions of mascu-
linity and femininity are most likely to be played out and
reproduced at the micro-level (Levanon & Grusky, 2012).
Secondly, exploring mechanisms at the micro-level has
assumed particular importance in the post-equal opportu-
nities era. While blatant sexism and gender bias are now
condemned, they often operate in subtle forms, uninten-
tionally, with liminal awareness, through non-re?exive
practicing (Martin, 2003; Martin, 2006). Unfair treatment
in the workplace tends to be manifested in ‘micro-inequi-
ties’ and ‘microaggressions’ – ephemeral, often covert
mechanisms of prejudice that are ‘small in nature, but
not trivial in effect’ (Rowe, 1990; Sue, 2010). Such practices
are more likely to be revealed through the investigation of
everyday experiences in speci?c, situated contexts
(Ridgeway, 2011, p. 28).
Thirdly, although students of horizontal segregation
tend to conduct macro-analyses of aggregative occupa-
tional categories and perform cross-national and longitudi-
nal studies, disaggregated research into individual
vocations is also encouraged (Crompton & Harris, 1998;
Weeden, 2004). Occupation-speci?c studies have the
potential to unveil the complexities of sex segregation.
Researchers in the ?eld concur that segregative phenom-
ena are thrown into sharper relief as the focal occupational
classi?cation becomes increasingly ?ne-grained
(Cockburn, 1988; Hakim, 1992, 2004). Indeed, it has been
suggested that the search for gendered ghettos might
extend not only to occupational specialisms but also to
their fragmentation into speci?c roles and work tasks
(Cockburn, 1988; Huffman, Cohen, & Pearlman, 2010). As
West and Zimmerman (1987, p. 143) remind us, gender
biases can be revealed through routine ‘issues of allocation’
and decisions about ‘who is to do what’.
Rendering the micropractices of gender segregation vis-
ible requires capturing individual experiences. Hence, the
research took the form of semi-structured interviews. The
interviewees were located in Scotland, the site of a number
of recent studies of gender and the accounting profession
(see, for example, Gallhofer et al., 2011; Gammie &
Gammie, 1995; Gammie et al., 2007) and where insolvency
practice is distinctive. Personal insolvency is devolved to
the Scottish government. Responsibility for legislation on
corporate insolvencies is divided between the Scottish
and Westminster governments. As will become apparent
later in the paper, this legislative-administrative context
has implications for the spatiality of appointment gaining
and the construction of networks.
Purposeful (non probability) sampling techniques were
deployed to identify interviewees. Our initial intention was
to select interviewees who were broadly representative of
the range of experiences of women working at a senior
level in the insolvency profession. We were also anxious
to include certain female practitioners whose knowledge
and position in the vocation rendered them especially
important sources of information. The published lists of
IPs proved useful in identifying potential interviewees,
though we also pursued individuals suggested by those
we had interviewed. As the study progressed our purpose-
ful approach to sample selection assumed a more sequen-
tial character (Teddlie & Yu, 2007). The strategy also
altered as our theorisation of the study developed in
unforeseen ways. While we did not embark on the project
with a view to pursuing a process of induction or grounded
theory, sample selection assumed a more theory-based
approach as gender essentialism emerged as an important
theme in our early interviews (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). In
particular, it became apparent that understanding per-
ceived differences between male and female experience
and the relational nature of gender (Alvesson & Due
Billing, 1997; Scott, 1986) required that we capture male
as well as female experiences. In consequence, six male
insolvency professionals were interviewed in addition to
thirteen women. The sampling ceased when the data
became suf?ciently dense and a point of saturation was
reached (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).
In 2007 it was estimated that just over 1000 people
were employed in the insolvency industry in Scotland
(The Value of the Insolvency Industry, 2008, p. 30). At the
point the project commenced, of the 106 IPs licensed by
ICAS and the Law Society of Scotland only 11 were women.
14.3% of the IP members of R3 located in Scotland were
female. It is generally perceived that the large accountancy
?rms and the Big 4 in particular, dominate the corporate
insolvency market and are more heavily involved in
administrations and corporate recovery work. Smaller
accountancy ?rms and specialist insolvency practices
dominate the liquidation market and personal bankruptcy
in Scotland. Our interviewees re?ected this distribution of
work. They were employed in the insolvency and corporate
recovery and restructuring departments of Big 4 multina-
tional accounting ?rms, other large ?rms, or smaller, local
practices. Although the research focused on accountants,
one interviewee worked in a law ?rm with a department
devoted to insolvency and distressed businesses. Other
interviewees were employed in ?rms that specialised in
the provision of insolvency and corporate recovery ser-
vices. Of those in practice, ?ve of our female respondents
worked primarily in corporate insolvency, ?ve in personal
insolvency, and two were occupied in both. All of our male
interviewees were employed mainly in corporate insol-
vency. The interviewees occupied a range of statuses –
from departmental managers (2), directors (3) and assis-
tant directors (2), to partners of ?rms (10) and their own-
ers (2). Most interviewees could boast one to two decades
in insolvency practice and their experience proved instruc-
tive in highlighting dynamic con?gurations of horizontal
segregation. As the interviewees were assured of anonym-
ity, ?ctitious names are deployed when testimony is
related in the remainder of the paper. Further details of
the interviewees are provided in Table 2.
Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews took place
from the end of 2010 through 2012. Those sampled for
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 47
interview were contacted by email or letter and informed
that the study concerned gender issues in the insolvency
profession. Assurances were given about con?dentiality
and anonymity. Almost all interviews were conducted at
the interviewees’ of?ce by one of the authors and a research
assistant. The duration of interviews ranged from 40 to
105 min. The interviews were audio-recorded and tran-
scribed with the exception of one instance where notes
were taken (at the request of the interviewee). Verbatim
transcription and manual coding was performed soon after
each interview (Gibbs, 2007, pp. 38–55). The printed tran-
scripts were reviewed for errors by the interviewers. Our
initial coding was a priori, the codes being drawn from
themes and concepts featuring in the previous literature
on gender segregation and the accountancy profession.
However, as the coding of successive transcripts was per-
formedadditional, groundedlabels beganto emerge, partic-
ularly in relation to gender essentialism and the activities
through which it was expressed (Ryan & Bernard, 2003).
As new analytical codes and sub-codes were created to
accommodate this emphasis, earlier transcripts were revis-
ited and recoded. Once the coding was completed copies of
the transcripts were cut and sorted by theme.
In order to contextualise the study it was important to
understand the gender composition of the insolvency craft.
As descriptive statistics relating to the whole profession
were not in the public domain, data relating to IPs was
sought from each RPB and by investigating their websites.
However, lists were only obtained for ICAS, LSS, LS and CAI.
We were advised by ICAEW and IPA that lists were not
publicly available. Consequently, an additional data source
was utilised. In the UK harmonisation of practice is orches-
trated by the Association of Business Recovery Profession-
als (R3). Formed in 1990 and representing 97% of all
licensed IPs, R3 claims to be ‘the leading trade body of
Business Recovery Professionals’.
11
The organisation has
two main classes of membership. Full members are
primarily licensed IPs
12
while Associates are those who do
not meet the requirements of full membership but work
substantially in business recovery. R3 publishes a directory
of insolvency professionals.
13
The directory for 2010 (the
year of the commencement of the project) contained the
names of 1432 full members and 602 members with associ-
ate status.
14
The data contained in the R3 directory, together
with that made available by the aforementioned RPBs,
proved especially useful for analysing the gender composi-
tion of the insolvency profession.
Having related the structure and composition of the
focal occupation attention turns in the next three sections
to examining the operation of gender-essentialism in cre-
ating segregative features at various levels of insolvency
practice. We begin by examining the importance of physi-
cal essentialism to the masculinisation of the sub-?eld as a
whole. Attention then turns to revealing how nurturant,
emotional and cognitive traits condition the gender com-
position of specialist ?elds of insolvency practice. We then
proceed to show that biological essentialism operates at
the level of role distribution and task allocation.
Essentialism and the masculinisation of the profession
The gender composition of the insolvency profession is
traditionally explained as a symptom of the potentially
dangerous character of the practitioner’s work. The con-
struction of the vocation as fundamentally masculine ema-
nates from what Levanon and Grusky (2012, p. 44) identify
as physical forms of essentialism – the assumption of male
strength and the ability to deal with hazardous situations.
The authors found that these forms of essentialism consti-
tuted an ‘extremely strong segregating force’ (p. 27). Phys-
ical essentialism is most obviously evident in the
uniformed services where tackling dangerous incidents
and the threat of violence emphasise the possession of
male strength. The women who eventually won entry to
male-dominated occupations such as law enforcement
were invariably assigned work related to child protection,
domestic violence and community relations – deemed
appropriate to their frail bodies and maternal and empa-
thetic instincts. Consequently, women police of?cers
became segregated as a ‘force within the force’ (Jackson,
2006, pp. 200–201; Brown & Heidensohn, 2000, pp. 43–
53; Grube-Farell, 2002; Miller, 1999, pp. 215–217). In the
military, women have traditionally been marginalised in
non-combatant roles and their presence is ‘camou?aged’
to protect the male hegemony of the institution
Table 2
Interviewees.
Interviewee Gender Age Children Firm
Aileen Female 30s No Big 4
Alasdair Male 50s Yes Large
Bridget Female 30s No Big 4
Carol Female 50s Yes Large
Ellen Female 40s Yes Small
Ewan Male 50s Yes Small
Gail Female 40s Yes Big 4
Heather Female 40s No Small
Ian Male 50s No Big 4
Isla Female 50s No Big 4
Lynn Female 40s Yes Medium
Malcolm Male 40s Yes Medium
Moira Female 50s No Large
Pam Female 50s Yes Not in practice
Robert Male 60s Yes Large
Rhona Female 30s Yes Big 4
Sonia Female 50s No Small
Stuart Male 40s Yes Big 4
Vivien Female 40s Yes Small
11https://www.r3.org.uk/uploads/documents/R3 Members
info.pdf.
12
More accurately, full membership is available to licensed IPs, or those
eligible for a license; individuals who have passed the Joint Insolvency
Board (JIEB) examination; lawyers (including The Bar) who work substan-
tially in the corporate recovery and insolvency arena and who are full
members of the Insolvency Lawyers Association (ILA); Chartered Surveyors
who are (a) members of a recognised professional body and (b) a full
Member of the Association of the Non-Administrative Receivers’ Associa-
tion (NARA) and (c) a Registered Property Receiver.
13
Available at:http://www.r3.org.uk/media/documents/membership/
Membership_Info_Sheet_2012.pdf.
14
Note the number of full members of R3 differs from the total number of
IPs identi?ed in Table 1. This arises because of timing difference between
the dates of the two data sources and because not all IPs are members of R3.
48 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
(Weinstein & D’Amico, 1999). In other contexts physical
essentialism tends to gender low-status manual work as
masculine. However, in the case studied here it privileges
the recruitment of men to a high status profession.
According to Flood and Skordaki (1995) the potentially
perilous nature of insolvency work helps explain why the
profession has not been perceived as an attractive vocation
for women. They reported as follows:
As a male Cork Gully insolvency partner suggested:
‘‘insolvency can involve nasty situations, such as having
to enforce a con?scation order on drug traf?kers. . .it
has been known for insolvency practitioners to be
threatened at gun point in such situations’’
(Maudesley-Thomas, 1994). The dynamic, hero-like
approach required of the insolvency practitioner was
also conveyed to us by most of our interviewees (in
the majority male).
[Flood & Skordaki, 1995, p. 14]
Recruitment material emphasises that insolvency prac-
titioners need the skills to deal with anxious creditors,
directors and employees (R3, Making a Career as an
Insolvency Practitioner). Insolvency administration can
involve con?ictual situations that are tense at best, and
hostile at worse. The IP’s ultimate responsibility is to the
creditors. Anger may be expressed at meetings of creditors
confronting the possibility that debts may not be recov-
ered, or workers who may be threatened with the prospect
of unemployment. Physical violence on such occasions
may be rare but the threat of it is omnipresent. One of
our interviewees noted that some insolvency partners have
two cars, ‘a Golf and a fancier car’. The Golf is taken out on
jobs because it creates a more appropriate impression and
the cost of any damage wreaked by discontented parties is
less (Rhona).
Women who do enter the profession can encounter
intimidating situations. With few exceptions our female
interviewees referred to the confrontational nature of the
work. One related how she and a colleague arrived at a
car showroom to pursue a liquidation only to witness a
customer smashing up the reception area. The customer
was aggrieved that he had parted with £2500 for a car he
was not going to receive. They had locked themselves in
a room, one saying to the other ‘it’s a good job we’re
women’ (Sonia). Another described her involvement in
the emotionally charged insolvency of a football club
where the threat of violence against the directors was high
and the anger of the supporters was not assuaged by the
free ?ow of alcohol. Another interviewee stated that she
hated search warrants due to the threat of violence. On
one occasion she arrived on site to discover that the person
on whom the warrant was served had been previously
charged with culpable homicide (Heather).
Though one or two considered such views out-dated,
our interviewees often referred to the way in which threat-
ening situations rendered the craft more suitable for those
possessed of masculine physicality. Robert related that:
you have to deal with aggressive people, people who are
dif?cult. You’re standing in front of 200 guys just before
Christmas, all of whom have been made redundant and
they’re saying to you things like ‘it’s ok for you, you’ve
got your kids Christmas presents’.
[Robert]
Ewan observed that some of the work involved ‘dealing
with quite aggressive people’. Indeed, two male intervie-
wees related episodes where they had been threatened
by an aggrieved party armed with a shotgun. Alasdair com-
mented that ‘issues of ?sticuffs are not too far away’. A
number of women interviewees also perceived that insol-
vency was traditionally seen as ‘a macho area’ because of
the potential for confrontation and belligerent behaviour
(Rhona). According to Rhona this was ‘not a job for the
faint hearted’. Heather’s early experiences revealed the
urgent need to ‘toughen up’: ‘The ?rst six months were
horrendous. It was dealing with evicting people’ (Heather).
Isla related: ‘some women would ?nd the sort of decisions
that you have to make very dif?cult. I’m talking about clos-
ing businesses, making people redundant and having to
deal with the aftermath of that’ (Isla). By contrast, for
men these situations might offer the prospect of a ‘power
trip’ and an opportunity to ‘kick some ass’ (Heather).
Essentialism and the gendering of specialisms
While physical essentialism has traditionally been
deployed to construct the insolvency ?eld as masculine,
other forms of essentialism, such as those emphasising
the nurturant, emotional, interactional and cognitive traits
of women, de?ne the gender composition of its particular
specialisms. In recent times the numerical feminisation of
professional occupations has been accompanied by
increasing horizontal segregation. Its prevalence appears
to increase the more ?ne-grained occupations are catego-
rised and analysed. Female-typed specialties emerge as
women concentrate in areas of practice (such as paediat-
rics in medicine) associated with gendered assumptions
about the female predilection for nurturing. In the legal
profession the concentration of women solicitors in family,
employment and housing law re?ects the manner in which
these areas are ‘de?ned in terms of allegedly female traits
such as empathy, consideration and personal support and
are contra-posed to traditionally male domains such as
the cut-throat world of corporate law, with its cold calcu-
lating logic and its emphasis on masculine traits such as
ruthlessness, assertiveness and endurance’ (Bolton &
Muzio, 2008, p. 286).
As this suggests, the construction of emotional labour
(‘the labour involved in dealing with other people’s feel-
ings’ (James, 1989, p. 15)) as feminine, is a potentially
important factor in horizontal segregation. Associated with
the low-skilled, unrecognised performance of the caring
and empathising function in the privatised world of the
domestic, emotional labour in the workplace is invariably
essentialised as the ‘natural’ province of women (James,
1989). It is marginalised as emotive rather than rational
work, as supportive rather than productive work, as the
province of semi professionals (social workers, nurses,
paralegals) rather than full professionals (Pierce, 1995,
pp. 83–102). In consequence, those (women) who perform
emotional labour command lower economic rewards and
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 49
suffer devalued social status (Guy & Newman, 2004). In the
focal profession of the current study, the essentialist
association of women with the emotional and nurturant
is manifest in the feminisation of the specialist ?eld of
personal insolvency.
As related earlier, insolvency represents a sub-?eld pri-
marily located within the generic accountancy profession.
While our respondents often referred to the permeability
of the boundaries between them, the primary division of
the craft they identi?ed was between ‘corporate’ and ‘per-
sonal’ insolvency. This con?guration of specialisms
re?ected distinctive regulatory contexts and the different
markets for each class of work. The corporate/personal
division tended to be institutionalised in the guise of sep-
arate departments or teams. One of the women IPs inter-
viewed described the insolvency market as ‘polarised’:
. . . into personal and corporate, I think that’s happened
inevitably as a result of changes in corporate legislation
and personal insolvency... You tend to ?nd as a rule, and
it is a generalisation, [that] . . . the big four specialise in
corporate insolvency and some of the bigger medium
sized ?rms have a well-founded corporate presence . . .
who do a bit of personal on the side. And then there
are the other providers who are, if you like, bulk provid-
ers of personal insolvency who maybe do a bit of corpo-
rate on the side. . .There’s fewer now who are what I
would call a general practice who do corporate and per-
sonal equally . . .There will be some medium sized ?rms
who will sit in both camps but as a general rule practi-
tioners go one way or the other.
[Ellen]
Heather con?rmed that personal and corporate insol-
vency had become distinctive competencies. While there
were exceptions, once established in one of the two spe-
cialisms, there was limited scope for transferring to the
other. There were few ?rms where staf?ng was ‘inter-
changeable’ (Heather).
The differences between corporate and personal
insolvency work have implications for the emergence of
gendered specialisms, the construction of glass walls
between them, and thus for the creation of an additional
level of horizontal segregation. A number of themes in par-
ticular emerged from our study. First, the lower status, less
glamorous ?eld of personal insolvency was perceived as a
specialism for the deployment of ‘natural’ female attri-
butes and the performance of emotional labour. While
women may achieve career advancement to partnership
in personal insolvency, this area of practice is associated
with small-medium ?rms where salaries are compara-
tively low. Second, personal insolvency was considered
attractive to many women because it offered greater
opportunities to achieve work-life balance. Third, the mas-
culinised ‘corporate’ specialism was assumed to have
higher status than the feminised ‘personal’ branch of prac-
tice. A clientele of individuals struggling with credit card
debt or failure to make mortgage repayments is unlikely
to match the reputational rewards of working on high pro-
?le corporate engagements. As one interviewee related:
‘people who work in corporate tend to think that you settle
for personal insolvency because they are ‘off’ doing the
‘real work’’ (Heather). Another suggested that data collec-
tion on this aspect of the study would be akin to interview-
ing ‘a very junior doctor and a senior consultant’ (Isla).
The extent to which personal insolvency could be gen-
dered female was articulated by an IP in an insolvency ?rm
comprising groups of corporate and personal staff. She
reported that whereas the corporate team was populated
by both sexes, the personal insolvency team was entirely
female. Recent attempts to recruit a personal insolvency
administrator attracted women candidates only: ‘I don’t
have the opportunity to get a bloke even if I wanted to’
(Heather).
Gender-essentialism was a foremost frame of reference
among our interviewees when explaining the division of
labour between specialisms. It was generally assumed that
men and women were possessed of distinctive qualities
that could be deployed in particular practice arenas. Isla
suspected that there was something in their ‘make up’ that
rendered corporate cases ‘more easy for a man to do than
for a woman’ (Isla; Aileen). Personal insolvency was con-
sidered the appropriate arena for the expression of the
assumed predilection of women to perform emotional
work. As Heather noted, a distinguishing characteristic of
personal insolvency is that it involves ‘dealing with indi-
viduals’ and situations where feminine attributes of caring
and offering emotional support were important. By con-
trast, while it could be a place for utilising these character-
istics too, corporate work was the appropriate domain for
the expression of masculine aggression, con?dence and
impassivity. Lynn, who worked in the corporate recovery
department of a large accounting ?rm, stated that staff in
this specialism tended to be ‘louder’ and ‘more con?dent’;
‘we’re more in your face because we have to be’ (Lynn).
Women IPs often took satisfaction from the fact that
their advice could restore domestic tranquillity and pre-
serve the household and family. Heather explained a pref-
erence for personal insolvency because it can ‘keep a
family in their house and the husband in his job and the
mother working, and the kids . . . I get more satisfaction
on the personal side’ (Heather). Emotional attachments to
clients can prove enduring. In corporate work by contrast,
there could be greater distance from the human conse-
quences of insolvency and therefore scope for greater
alignment with male dispassion. The case tended to focus
on identifying and valuing assets and liabilities in the
knowledge that limited liability for the debts of the busi-
ness will insulate its owners from the worst consequences
of ?nancial failure. In personal insolvency assets such as
the family home could be at risk. The insolvency practi-
tioner is therefore ‘dealing with somebody’s personal cir-
cumstances, you’re dealing with their life’ (Sonia).
Heather stated that in such cases ‘you’re almost acting as
a counsellor and an advisor’ and there is scope for the dis-
play of feminine sympathy.
Other essentialist feminine attributes of sociability
were aligned to the demands of personal insolvency.
Women interviewees boasted a better ‘bedside manner’
and ‘empathy with people’ (Aileen) than their male col-
leagues. Women were ‘aware of the pain’ of personal insol-
vency and were more sympathetic as a result (Pam).
Bridget observed that women were generally ‘a bit more
50 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
softly, softly’ and ‘a bit more touchy feely’ (Bridget). The
empathetic qualities of women were noted by several
interviewees, including Robert, an insolvency partner,
who observed that ‘I do ?nd that females are better listen-
ers so had lots of cases where the girls come, particularly
on personal bankruptcy cases’ (Robert).
The embeddedness of these gendered assumptions also
appear to extend beyond the practicing ?rms. Moira sus-
pected that those who refer cases of personal insolvency
to practitioners might also be in?uenced by gender attri-
butes, among other factors:
On the personal insolvency front, when you’re dealing
with a network of referrers, they quite often like a
woman because people are sometimes in a very fragile
situation when they’re coming to you, particularly for
personal insolvency advice.
[Moira]
The suggestion that women are perceived as experts in
the personal–emotional aspects of practice and the impli-
cations of this for the creation of horizontal segregation
at the level of specialisms resonates with the earlier ?nd-
ings of Flood and Skordaki (1995). Their study, which
focussed on large-scale business failures, suggested that
while women who were too caring might not last long in
the vocation, the few females therein were assuming cus-
todianship of its ‘human side’. The authors noted that
‘the human dimension of insolvency work has so far been
?agged as an issue primarily by women insolvency practi-
tioners’. This gendered province had been institutionalised
through the formation of an International Women’s Insol-
vency & Restructuring Confederation (IWIRC) which
explored the role of women in the vocation and ‘the human
dimension of insolvency work’ (Flood & Skordaki, 1995, p.
25).
The foregoing thus tends to con?rm England’s (2011, p.
160) contention that ‘In some cases, ending up in female-
intensive sub?elds results from discrimination, but in oth-
ers it may result from. . .gender essentialism’. It should be
recognised however, that the construction of personal
insolvency as a feminine specialism also rests on the
assumption that the work is more of?ce-based and offers
greater scope for women to balance work and family com-
mitments. This feature is con?rmative of its lower status as
a primarily feminised niche. Personal insolvency could
involve servicing a large number of small cases that might
be accommodated within a nine-to-?ve working day.
15
Those engaged with a small number of large corporate cases
could not easily manage their diaries in this way. Sonia,
related that the former was not reducible to conventional
working hours. It involved:
long, long hours, up early in the morning, travelling
there and everywhere, back home at 10 o’clock. . . I sup-
pose when you are in your 20’s or early 30’s it’s not so
bad but later on you start to think I want more of a
life. . . then I started doing personal. It was still long
hours and a lot of work but there wasn’t so much having
to go out, not being out of the of?ce all day and I . . .
thought this is actually quite interesting as well.
[Sonia]
She stated that in corporate work ‘if a bank phones you
at 5 o’clock and say I want to appoint you as Receiver for
this company, you can’t say ‘oh can it wait until the morn-
ing’, you’ve just got to go’ (Sonia). Weekend working was a
distinct possibility. Carol con?rmed that corporate work
involved long hours that didn’t always ‘lend itself to a fam-
ily life’. Corporate cases are also ‘transaction driven’ result-
ing in the practitioner being ‘constantly at the demand of
the client’ and working to deadlines set by the client. Work
routines are less predictable and ?exible or part-time
working arrangements are not feasible. Consequently,
organising ones life ‘can all get a little on the messy side’
(Carol).
Rhona con?rmed that personal insolvency was ‘mostly
of?ce based’, offered scope for more regular hours and
was therefore ‘probably more suited to females’. In some
instances there was the possibility of ?exible working. In
contrast to corporate work, cases tended to concern indi-
viduals who themselves preferred to operate during regu-
lar hours of business. The manner of its regulation, as well
as court-related diary ?xtures, also tended to confer
greater structure to personal insolvency and created more
manageable working days. Here, our interviewees also
referred to cognitive essentialism. One male interviewee
observed that women were more organised, neater and
considered in their approach to work than men. Another
male interviewee af?rmed that while corporate work
required spontaneity, supervision and co-ordinating oth-
ers, the processes of personal insolvency involved ‘a lot
more what I would call, ‘administrative’’ (Ewan), form ?ll-
ing and desk-based tasks which were increasingly
assumed to fall within the province of the feminine.
Essentialism, role distribution and task allocation
Gender essentialism in insolvency practice was also evi-
dent at the level of task allocation and role distribution.
Here physical/biological essentialism was again present.
In their recent study Levanon & Grusky (2012, p. 9) recog-
nise the possibility that:
As the genders come together in the workplace, deeply
entrenched essentialist precepts may inform decisions
about how tasks should then be divided among them,
with the result being a strengthened ‘‘micro-essential-
ism’’ informed by presumed gender skills, aptitudes,
and tastes.
In their research on audit ?rms Anderson-Gough et al.
(2005, p. 479) discovered instances ‘of a gendering of
labour in dealing with particular tasks at clients’. Of partic-
ular relevance to the current study, they related the case of
a trainee auditor who had been asked to perform insol-
vency work. The trainee suspected that she was sent out
on jobs involving redundancies because she was a woman.
Following their earlier illustration of the pervasive nature
15
A survey in 2010 also revealed that the average hours worked by IPs
engaged exclusively in corporate insolvency was higher (48.4 per week)
than those engaged in personal insolvency only (44.6) (The Value of the
Insolvency Industry, 2010, p. 10).
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 51
of ‘the client’ in the discourse of the ?rm(Anderson-Gough,
Grey, & Robson, 2000), the authors argue that such gen-
dered practices are legitimised by ?rms as ‘client prefer-
ences’. The primacy of serving the client also features in
other professions such as law (Sommerlad, 2002). When
masculinities are mobilised and con?ated with work prior-
ities it is very dif?cult for women to escape or contest them
(Martin, 2001). There is a long history of the manner in
which the allocation of tasks to women or ethnic minori-
ties has been conditioned by reluctance to offend the cli-
ent, irrespective of the resultant injustice served on the
personnel concerned and the reinforcement of offensive
stereotypes (Hammond, 2002; Walker, 2011).
As the instance discovered by Anderson-Gough et al.
(2005) suggests, the gendered allocation of certain tasks
is evident in insolvency and is activated by the need to pro-
gress ‘the case’. There is, however an additional dynamic in
this sub-?eld, one which emanates from the aforemen-
tioned threats to the physical security of the practitioner.
The allocation of tasks and distribution of roles is informed
by essentialist assumptions about the gender composition
of a potentially hostile client–audience.
Althoughthe possibility of con?ict has traditionally been
articulated as a reason why insolvency is male dominated,
those women who achieve access to the profession may
encounter situations where their gender, and in extreme
situations, their sexuality, is deployed as a resource to dif-
fuse the potential for confrontation. In occupations such
as advertising women may be utilised as ‘exhibitional
objects’ to help win clients (Alvesson, 1998). In policing,
where the extent of gender-differentiated deployment is
an enduring issue (Brown & Heidensohn, 2000, pp. 88–92;
Westmarland, 2001, pp. 17–45), there is a perception that
when aggressive force is required to address violent inci-
dents it is appropriate to send in male of?cers. But in con-
?ictual situations where there is the potential for violence,
policewomen may be engaged to ‘de-escalate’ – their empa-
thetic, communication and negotiating skills serving to
defuse hostility (Blok & Brown, 2005, p. 32; Miller, 1999,
pp. 215–226). Thus, different ‘essential’ traits are drawn
upon in response to distinctive scenarios – male physical
strengthor female interaction. Inthe case of insolvency, evi-
dence suggests that the biological female is enlisted and
‘displayed’ to pacify male aggression.
The latter practice was most candidly discussed by Rob-
ert, the head of an insolvency practice:
If you go out and you’ve got an aggressive situation I
usually surround myself with pretty young blondes . . .
I remember on one occasion . . . a demolition company,
they were bears in there, great big gorillas of guys com-
ing off huge lorries. . .I thought even I’m scared of this
lot. And they were furious, they hated their boss
because the business had gone bust. . .At the end of
the day we said look, you can stay as long as you like
with Jane. She will take down all your particulars and
make sure you get your redundancy and stuff like that.
Jane had a low top on and you could see these guys sit-
ting there like puppies waiting for their shot to sit oppo-
site Jane. So, I’ve used it [gender] to my advantage.
[Robert]
Robert also asserted that he had resisted the tendency
of older partners not to send women on jobs where hostile
encounters were likely. These most commonly involved
aggressive male industrial labourers working in districts
of socio-economic deprivation. This tendency he found
upsetting: ‘I’d say of course you can, they might hit me
but they won’t hit her’ (Robert). Malcolm af?rmed that
the presence of women practitioners could prove bene?cial
in volatile situations ‘where directors have got really
uptight about things, but having a female there certainly
helped calm things down’ (Malcolm). Another reported
that in the ‘distressed environment’ of insolvency ‘females
on jobs can bring a calming in?uence’ (Stuart). One male IP
related that where the prospect of a hostile company direc-
tor existed ‘you think well, would he really kick her head
in, whereas he might give me a real pasting’ (Ewan).
The gender source of hostility could be mutable, context
speci?c, and the composition of the insolvency team might
be con?gured accordingly. Women insolvency practitio-
ners reported instances where the allocation of staff could
be determined by the gender demographics of the
workforce:
Yes gender does help in the job. . .[if] you’re going out to
make 25 people redundant that work on a building site
and John Smith goes to tell them, the men are immedi-
ately going to be aggressive. You put a woman up there
and the stereotypes kick in. As much as the men might
want to be mouthy they’re not going to threaten you...
The opposite side of that is, try and make 25 women
redundant and as a woman you will get it in the neck.
[Lynn]
Bridget, an insolvency manager in a large ?rm, con-
?rmed that gender was an elemental frame of reference
in determining staf?ng con?gurations for particular jobs.
Although informing 200 male employees that the company
had gone bust was undoubtedly ‘unnerving’ it might help:
. . .that you are female, because although they will shout
and bawl there are no physical issues. Whereas I have
also seen where it’s been a male colleague who’s stood
up and done the same and they have almost been phys-
ically attacked which they wouldn’t necessarily have
done to a woman . . .You think put a woman up there
because they won’t attack her but put a guy up and they
will. . . It just depends on the businesses you go into.
[Bridget]
Sonia recalled that the presence of a woman and the
deployment of essential feminine, as opposed to mascu-
line, traits could prove bene?cial:
. . .years ago if we went out on a liquidation on the ?rst
day say, we would ?nd that if women were there the
men, the employees, always reacted better because
they didn’t want to start having a go. Whereas if a guy
was saying to them ‘you’re actually going to be made
redundant today’, well, they could kick off ... If it was
a woman saying ‘I’m really sorry but this is what’s going
to happen’, that always seemed to calm things down.
[Sonia]
52 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
Some of the more experienced practitioners perceived
that there was now less manipulation of gender than in
the past and that the speci?c non-gender attributes of
the individual practitioner vis-à-vis the case scenario was
more important in task allocation and role distribution
(Carol). But others af?rmed its continuing relevance. There
was ‘still a view’ that ‘you can’t hit a female and you can’t
hit somebody in front of a female either, whereas if you put
two guys out there. . . there’s just testosterone’ (Ellen;
Pam).
Interestingly, the responses of female insolvency pro-
fessionals to everyday gender-based inequities founded
on essentialist notions often appears to take the form of
asserting technical competence in the craft. This, in turn
encourages the emergence of new forms of segregation
on the basis of re-gendered competencies. Several of the
women interviewed performed various technical functions
within the profession or their ?rms. These included lectur-
ing for professional organisations, and assuming internal
risk compliance and training roles. Sonia referred to a
well-known female IP as follows: ‘I’ve heard men saying
what she doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing and if they’re
having a discussion they ask, ‘Ellen, what do you think?’’
(Sonia). A male interviewee argued that men and women
in his of?ce went about their work in different ways. When
an issue arose a male practitioner’s instinct would be to get
on the phone and sort it out whereas a woman would
‘think about it, analyse it’ and was ‘more likely to pull
out the Insolvency Act’ (Ian). Such a gendered allocation
of competence may form a future source of horizontal re-
segregation. The ?ndings suggest that at present, techni-
cally able women at manager level are highly respected
as knowledge-feeders to male superiors, who as IPs devote
more time to front of house and out of of?ce work such as
networking and business development.
It is thus apparent that at the level of task allocation
and role distribution there continues to be ‘everyday reli-
ance on the gender frame’ and evidence of gender essen-
tialism in client interactions (Ridgeway, 2011, p. 185). We
have in the insolvency profession an example of ‘manag-
ing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of
attitudes and activities appropriate to one’s sex category’
(West & Zimmerman, 1987, p. 127). When women are
assigned to, and perform, insolvency work involving male
audiences they effectively ‘produce enactments of their
‘‘essential’’ femininity’ which reinforce and reproduce
gender stereotypes (West & Zimmerman, 1987, p. 144).
The same also applies when male practitioners are
selected for tasks involving hostile female audiences.
These practices are characterised by their re?exivity. Gen-
der is not mere ‘background’ but is activated intentionally,
for a purpose, in full awareness of the gender dynamics to
be responded to and the gendered solution to be opera-
tionalized (Martin, 2003; Martin, 2006). According to
Martin (2006) gender is rarely practiced in the workplace
in this way. She refers to instances where a male boss un-
re?exively acts to rescue women in trouble. In contrast, in
insolvency practice we have observed a deliberate use of
gender to protect men, in particular, from threats to their
physical security.
Networks, segregation and essentialism
Charles and Grusky (2004, p. 16) suggest that gender-
de?ned networks constitute mechanisms that can perpet-
uate occupational segregation. Networks may ‘reproduce
and amplify forms of segregation that have their sources
in essentialist processes’ (Charles & Grusky, 2004, p. 20).
In relation to horizontal segregation the social activities
associated with networking tend to consolidate gender-
de?ned areas of practice. They serve to entrench occupa-
tional boundaries, reinforce the segregation of specialisms,
roles and tasks, and, where male-de?ned, question female
participation and encourage ‘auto-exclusion’ (Bolton &
Muzio, 2007, p. 57). Further, network construction is
impacted by in and out-group biases which are informed
by gender stereotyping and this tends towards homosocial
reproduction in the workplace (Ridgeway, 2011, pp. 110–
112). In the case of the insolvency profession in Scotland
the outcome of these processes has been the emergence
of gender segregated, and in the case of women, a gen-
der-de?ned institutionalised network. Before explaining
this development we ?rst explore the importance of net-
working in the insolvency profession and reveal its role
in consolidating essentialist-based segregation.
It is established that in modern accounting and other
professional service ?rms, participation in the everyday,
social process of networking and achieving the nomencla-
ture of ‘networker’, are not only central to securing career
advancement they are also elemental signi?ers of profes-
sional competence and identity (Anderson-Gough, Grey,
& Robson, 2006). So much so that Anderson-Gough et al.
(2006, pp. 239–240) contend that ‘not to be a networker,
is to face almost an abyss – the pure negation of selfhood
implied by being a ‘nobody’’. The informalism of male net-
works constructed on the basis of shared interests, such as
sport and drinking, and their resultant discourses, may
serve to exclude and alienate women (Anderson-Gough
et al., 2005; Collinson & Hearn, 1994).
The importance of networking in insolvency has already
been suggested. In her study of lawyers, Sommerlad (2002)
referred speci?cally to the way in which women insol-
vency practitioners were obliged to learn the ‘invisible
code book’ of the laddish drinking culture which features
in this specialism. A key feature of insolvency is the way
in which practitioners secure work and establish a position
in the marketplace for professional services. This relies
heavily on developing relationships with those who may
refer cases, such as senior bank personnel, solicitors,
accountants and revenue and customs of?cials. As our
interviewee Robert put it, insolvency practice is ‘all about
the people you know and whether they trust you’. Indeed,
insolvency personnel from accountancy ?rms are often
seconded to major banks to nurture business connections.
The major banks establish formal or informal ‘bank panels’,
membership of which can be necessary to gain work from
this source. In a highly competitive market, developing
these networks is seen as important to practice develop-
ment and career building.
Our ?ndings tend to con?rm that these networks
primarily comprise male elites drawn from connected
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 53
occupational hierarchies. Their signi?cance here lies in the
fact that such networks are especially important in corpo-
rate insolvency where they reinforce the masculinisation
of the specialism. According to Ian the network of IPs,
senior insolvency lawyers, bankers and other work provid-
ers constitute a ‘very male dominated’ community. As
Bridget said, ‘the guys are all part of that boy’s club’. Isla
stated that ‘there’s just that sense of all boys together’.
Carol con?rmed that women had limited access to net-
works, ‘women haven’t been in senior roles where they
have to build and maintain a business, so what do they
do if they don’t do the golf course, the football, the rugby,
where do they build their client base, how do they retain
their client base?’ Rhona, from a Big 4 ?rm, also alluded
to the disadvantages of not participating in male sports.
In relation to marketing activity: ‘a lot of the clients prefer
golf, football or rugby. . . I don’t play golf so therefore it
kind of precludes you from doing those events. I go to
the rugby and football occasionally but it’s not something
that I’d actively do, but we do try’ (Rhona). Business devel-
opment, or bringing in new corporate insolvency clients,
was described as a critical element in constructing a suc-
cessful career. To the extent that marketing and socialising
events took place after work, women with children were
considered to be disadvantaged because they often
excluded themselves from these activities.
Networking itself was often perceived by our respon-
dents as an essentially masculine pursuit. Moira, a partner
in a smaller, female dominated, practice indicated that cer-
tain networks are so gendered male that her ?rm was dis-
advantaged in the competition for work because it lacked a
resident man who could operate in that arena: ‘one of the
problems that we have with the banks, for example, is that
we don’t have senior men that can go out and network
with the senior men in the banks. . . most of the decision
makers in the banks are men’ (Moira). To remedy this sit-
uation the ?rm had inaugurated a ‘hunt for men’ to ful?l
this role. A male would be:
. . .much more likely to be chatting about the football
world for example. If you are with a bunch of guys that’s
what you’re going to be talking about. We had some
men that we were entertaining recently and a couple
of my colleagues came through from Glasgow. It was
summertime and I joined them for breakfast before
they headed off to the cricket. I’ve absolutely no doubt
that the chat when I was in the room would be com-
pletely different to when I left and they went off to
watch the sport . . .I know nothing about cricket. I can
only speak about it on a very super?cial level.
[Moira]
Our interviewees cited problems of access to male-
dominated networks as a factor that sustained the mascu-
linisation of corporate work and the concentration of
women in personal insolvency. In explaining gender segre-
gation Isla observed that in corporate insolvency:
. . .until relatively recently most of the work would’ve
come from bankers and most of the bankers would’ve
been male. Undoubtedly there would have been a
culture . . .which I think has eroded [since the banking
crisis] to some extent [of] boys drinking lots of pints
down the pub and then going to a lap dancing club.
It’s quite hard to do that if you’re a woman.
[Isla]
Lynn, who has particular expertise in personal insol-
vency, related that while the male partner assumed
responsibility for targeting those ‘slightly higher up the
food chain’, she was ‘quite happy to see the people who
are further down’ (Lynn). Given the nature of the work per-
sonal insolvency involved a ‘different type of marketing
because you can’t necessarily take these people to lunch’
(Lynn). One male respondent, who asserted that network-
ing was an inclusive activity engaging the whole senior
insolvency team, offered revealing insights to a potentially
gendered distribution of responsibility when explaining
how networks were managed:
We’ll have a list of the teams in the banks that we want
to stay close to. Within those teams there’ll be individ-
uals, and some of those individuals I’ll effectively man
mark, the top guys, and I’ll say I want to be seeing them
two, three, four times a year. . .and then I rely on the
rest of the team to pick up the rest.
[Ian, emphasis added]
The institutionalisation of gender-segregated networks
Faced with limited access to male networks, women
insolvency practitioners have tended to cultivate their
own and thereby consolidate gender segregation in this
increasingly important dimension of professional activity.
Interviewees reported that their networks mainly com-
prised other women and operated differently to those pop-
ulated by men. Within the spatial con?nes of the closely
de?ned market for insolvency services in Scotland most
women are acquainted with the other women in the sub-
?eld. Rhona also suggested that women were more ‘com-
fortable marketing and selling to other women, organising
female events’ (Rhona). Lynn, for example, related her
involvement in a networking event focussed on a ‘Take
That’ concert. The event was directed towards the small
community of female bankers only. She found the experi-
ence ‘good fun’ and an opportunity to ‘bitch about the
men’ (Lynn).
The business and social relationships that women built
through their networks were also gender-de?ned and
re?ected essentialist notions of female sociability. This
rendered them more enduring and deep rooted than those
constituted by men. Aileen observed that men did not
seem to need to ‘get on that well’ to do business. They
could ‘get together, play a game of golf, have a chat and
that’s the job done’. By contrast ‘ladies probably take a
while to get to know each other but when they do they
become more attached’ (Aileen).
The most tangible manifestation of the existence of
gender-segregated networks is their institutionalisation.
In the case of one Big 4 ?rm the protestations of women
about the predominance of events centring on football,
rugby and golf, resulted in the establishment of a separate
programme of networking events exclusively for female
54 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
staff and clients. These involved feminine activities such as
lunching and visits to upmarket fashion and jewellery
stores (Ian). More signi?cantly, in 2008 the Scottish
Women in Insolvency Group (SWIG) was founded by Judith
Howson, an assistant director of corporate recovery with
Deloitte, Glasgow. Its object is to provide ‘a networking
forum to help business development challenges faced by
women working in the industry’ (Insolvency Group,
2008). An article reporting the existence of SWIG illus-
trated the manner in which it represented a reaction to
the exclusionary character of male sociality:
Fed up being a non-golfer, in an industry that seems to
prize 18 holes as the ultimate networking event? Judith
Howson, a corporate recovery expert with Deloitte in
Glasgow, feels exactly the same way.
With the domination of activities which show a prefer-
ence for what men might be interested in, she decided
to set up her own group to attract women in the profes-
sion.
[Howson, 2008]
Bridget recalled that it was tentatively suggested that
male insolvency practitioners might respond by establish-
ing a ‘SMIG’ (Scottish Men in Insolvency Group). To this
prospect she had countered ‘you guys have all your gol?ng
and football . . . so don’t give me that nonsense’ (Bridget).
Aileen related that while men could be supportive of SWIG,
on an ‘off day’ some in the of?ce:
. . .might say ‘oh we’re going to set up Scottish Men in
Insolvency Group. It’s not right that you go off and do
these things with women. We don’t do that, we don’t
have a group’ and I’ll say ‘well you do because when
do I ever come to watch the football with you?.
[Aileen]
Social activities organised by SWIG are innately femi-
nine and diametrically opposed to the male obsession with
football and golf. As Ellen related: ‘We think, well, you go
off and play golf. The vast majority of us don’t, don’t want
to do it. So we have things like pamper days, and girly
things instead’ (Ellen). The activities represent an essen-
tialist assertion ‘that women do things differently to guys’
(Aileen). Meetings of SWIG usually involve technical sem-
inars. These are followed by:
something slightly female focused. One year we had a
chocolate fountain, one year we had seasonal fashion
trends for business dressing, one year we had a spa
afternoon where they [the members] could have spa
treatments, partner-up with somebody they maybe
haven’t met before and then all go out for dinner. So
the events aren’t necessarily something that guys are
going to be interested in.
[Aileen]
Men are not excluded from SWIG, and on occasion a
small number attend its meetings, particularly when the
organisations to which they belong sponsor an event.
However, akin to the marginalisation that women often
experience at male-dominated events, the attending male
is represented as ‘the token guy sitting in the corner’
(Bridget). Ellen related how on the occasions that
men attended SWIG gatherings ‘they get the piss taken
out of them something rotten. They kind of put themselves
up as the token male and accept that that is their role’
(Ellen).
Not all women were supportive of the SWIG venture
due to the message of gender segregation it symbolised.
Vivien asked ‘is it the right thing to do, to set up a female
only part of something when what you are trying to do is
make sure there is no distinction between the genders?’
(Vivien). Others feared being labelled a ‘feminist’ or
objected to being identi?ed by their sex rather than their
professional ability. There were also suggestions that
because it had largely emerged as a counter to male hom-
osociality its activities were too heavily focused on the
social. Vivien, asked ‘what value added does it give me as
a professional?’ (Vivien). Heather doubted whether gather-
ings of women were suf?ciently cognisant of the realpoli-
tik – the need to address the fundamental problem of
accessing male networks rather than formalising the gen-
der boundaries around them. One interviewee fundamen-
tally disagreed with ventures that separately identi?ed
women and consolidated gender-centred relationship
building. She indicated that in her city there existed:
a women’s insolvency forum. I don’t want to go to a
women’s insolvency forum. I don’t want to go to a
women’s networking event. How does that help me?
That doesn’t give me the business links. That introduces
me to other women ... Great for meeting people but
from a business networking point of view in insolvency,
there are so few women up there in high positions that
actually to network [with other women] is pointless.
You need to be networking with the blokes, you need
to be networking with the [Inland] Revenue, you need
to be networking regardless of gender.
[Heather]
Rhona was also concerned that gender segregated net-
works run the risk of disconnecting women from the pow-
erful men at the head of organisational hierarchies in the
masculine world of corporate insolvency: ‘you can’t just
network with women because the decision makers, espe-
cially if you’re doing corporate work, in the banks, will be
males’ (Rhona).
One response to the networking problematic of women
insolvency practitioners is a greater emphasis on technical
matters. It was suggested that marketing might be
extended beyond socialising towards knowledge sharing.
For example, given that bankers now faced greater restric-
tions on what entertainment they could accept, offering
regular technical presentations and staff training work-
shops on insolvency-related subjects were constructive,
more professional, modes of building relationships. This
was ‘very good PR. You get lots of people in a room at
the same time and it demonstrates your technical abilities
as well’ (Rhona). Such activity might also reinforce the
aforementioned potential source of re-segregation in
the future, the feminine association with technical
competence.
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 55
Discussion and conclusions
This study was inspired by the possibility that apparent
advances in the recruitment and career mobility of women
in the generic accounting profession may veil the reaction-
ary emergence of other forms of gender discrimination
such as horizontal segregation. It has recently been reas-
serted that the ‘sex segregation of occupations and jobs is
the deepest and most pervasive gender structure in the
organisation of paid work’ (Ridgeway, 2011, p. 99). Occu-
pational sociologists have observed that while assaults on
inequality and the rise of egalitarianism have increased
women’s access to higher education and the labour market,
these features have been accompanied by greater occupa-
tional segregation (Charles & Bradley, 2009; Charles &
Grusky, 2004).
The study has attempted to reveal the presence of hor-
izontal segregation and the processes which sustain it in a
specialist sub-?eld of the accounting profession – insol-
vency practice. Our ?ndings show that such segregation
pervades at the levels of occupation, specialism and task
and is underpinned by varieties of gender essentialism. It
is suggested that physical essentialism – the assumption
of male strength and the presumed ability of men to deal
with potentially hazardous situations encountered in prac-
tice – explains why the sub-?eld of insolvency practice has
been traditionally gendered male. We contend that nurtur-
ant, emotional and interactional forms of essentialism
combine to construct practice specialisms within the sub-
?eld as masculine and feminine respectively. We argue
that physical and interactional essentialism conditions
the distribution of roles and the allocation of work tasks.
It is suggested that essentialism is a basis for the ampli?ca-
tion and reproduction of segregation in increasingly
important arenas of professional activity such as
networking.
In common with the ?ndings of studies of other profes-
sions, divisions of labour in insolvency were often
informed by cultural assumptions of gender-essentialist
attributes. Hence corporate insolvency was deemed a more
appropriate arena for the expression of masculine aggres-
sion, careerism, detachment and informalism. Personal
insolvency not only involved the scheduling of work in
ways which were more conducive to women achieving
work-life balance, it was also a sub-specialism in which
the ‘natural’ feminine attributes of caring, empathy and
concern for family, could be most usefully deployed. Essen-
tialist assumptions about the gendered division of emo-
tional labour thus sustained occupational segregation.
Our ?ndings are therefore consistent with Charles and
Grusky’s (2004, p. 27) view that ‘durable essentialism sup-
ports gender-typical identities and behaviours and thereby
preserves horizontal sex segregation in modern labour
markets’.
However, the mere identi?cation of segregated sub-
specialisms founded on essentialism presents too simplis-
tic a picture of the everyday operation of gender in insol-
vency practice. As Charles and Grusky (2004, pp. 315–
316) also remind us ‘essentialist precepts’ are particularly
entrenched ‘in micro-level interaction’, and their power
tends to be expressed ‘at a very detailed level’ (Levanon
& Grusky, 2012, p. 34). Our ?ndings at the level of the dis-
tribution of roles and allocation of work tasks reveal pat-
terns of horizontal segregation undergirded by
con?gurations of work-body alignment – the nature of
the work may determine the gendered identity of the prac-
titioner body deemed most appropriate to perform it
(Ashcraft, 2013). In scenarios involving the potential for
con?ict, case/client-focused adjustments take place in
ways that exploit essentialist gender attributes. Although
some respondents suggested that such episodes were less
prevalent than in the past, the prospect of hostile encoun-
ters with the creditors, directors and/or employees of
insolvent concerns ensured that the primary basis of task
allocation continued to be the sex composition of the client
populace. Most notably, where the latter was predomi-
nantly male, female insolvency personnel might be
deployed in the expectation that a feminine presence
would appease agitated men. Such assignments con-
structed the physical woman as a paci?er, in contrast to
the enforcer role of the more powerful male.
The results of the study thus suggest that physical
essentialism operates beyond perceived differences in
male and female ‘strength’, its principal attribute in the lit-
erature (Levanon & Grusky, 2012). Assumptions about gen-
dered bodies appear to have informed decisions about
labour deployment and thereby contributed to the segre-
gation of individual work tasks, roles and sub-?elds. And,
as a number of the examples reported in the paper indi-
cate, some of these gender dynamics could be overt as well
as subtle.
The aforementioned con?guration of sub-specialisms in
insolvency and the allocation of staff to certain types of
work on the basis of sex and gender resonate strongly with
West and Zimmerman’s (1987, p. 127) de?nition of gender
as ‘the activity of managing situated conduct in light of
normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropri-
ate for one’s sex category’. Investigation of both of these
topics has also revealed periodic reversions in insolvency
practice to some essentialist notions of male aggression
and detachment, and female characteristics of caring and
emotional engagement. The study con?rms that the exis-
tence of ‘female-intensive sub?elds’ is sustained by the
persistence of ‘the notion that men and women are
innately and fundamentally different in interests and skills’
(England, 2010, p. 150).
In his review of feminist and gender theories of occupa-
tional segregation Anker (1997) identi?ed 13 stereotypical
characteristics of women that may effect occupational seg-
regation by sex. A number of these traits have been
strongly evidenced in this study of the insolvency profes-
sion. First, ‘lesser willingness to face physical danger and
use physical force’ has been advanced as the historical rea-
son why the occupation was deemed unsuitable for
women. Second, for those women who do enter the voca-
tion, their ‘attractive physical appearance’, and in some
cases ‘sex appeal’ has been used to avert the prospect of
male violence. Third, the ‘caring nature’ of women has
been deployed in con?ictual encounters with male clients
and their employees, and helps explain the concentration
56 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
of women in the specialism of personal insolvency. Fourth,
‘greater interest in working at home’ has been identi?ed as
an explanation for the concentration of women in personal
insolvency practice. The ?ndings also suggest that Anker’s
list of stereotypical traits might extend beyond a narrow
conception of occupation and workplace. Given the signif-
icance of networking to modern professional life we might
also add ‘disinclination to enjoy football and golf’ and the
consequential formation of gender-de?ned networks as
factors sustaining horizontal segregation.
Indeed, the current study has shown that essentialism
featured large in the construction and maintenance of net-
works. Although male practices in this respect appear to
have been largely non-re?exive, women were highly sensi-
tive to their impacts. Given its signi?cance to corporate
insolvency in particular, they were irritated by their exclu-
sion from the arenas where male homosociality was forti-
?ed, particularly those relating to sport (Anderson-Gough
et al., 2005). The most tangible demonstration of their mar-
ginalisation was the creation and institutionalisation of a
separate women’s group with the speci?c purpose of
developing alternative, gendered-de?ned sets of business
and social connections. The manner in which the SWIG
emphasises cultivating networks among women, organ-
ising social events around decidedly feminine interests,
and subjecting attending ‘token males’ to mild ridicule,
are suggestive of the extent of women’s perceived alien-
ation from the professional malestream and their own seg-
regative reactions to it. These reactions too, draw heavily
on essentialist precepts of gender difference. Women’s
response to the hegemony of homosocial males is to effec-
tively nurture female homosociality in ways that reinforces
their status as the ‘other’ and consolidate the gender segre-
gation evident in other areas of professional practice.
Such shifts in patterns of segregation offer insights to
the dynamics of the gender structuring of professions.
They point to the enduring centrality of gender in occupa-
tional placements and work allocations and the manner in
which these dynamics are played out in the context of the
primacy of the male professional project. Segregation and
re-segregation have long been understood as patriarchal
strategies for retaining the male domination of occupa-
tions associated with the highest economic rewards and
social status (Witz, 1992, pp. 25–35). Studies suggest that
the development of feminine niches is designed to pre-
serve masculine professionalisation projects threatened
by increasing feminisation (Bolton & Muzio, 2008;
Roberts & Coutts, 1992). These arguments have potency
in the professional sub-?eld examined in this paper. Ini-
tially, the lucrative ?eld of insolvency was discursively
legitimated as male on grounds of the hazardous nature
of the work (Flood & Skordaki, 1995). It is suggested that
as women successfully entered the vocation they were
accommodated in less remunerative specialisms aligned
to their essential feminine traits. Subsequently, network-
ing assumed increasing signi?cance to career advancement
and processes of homosocial reproduction facilitated the
disproportionate congregation of males in this activity.
There are signals that women are being relegated to tech-
nical support roles and this may become a new, gender-
de?ned source of positioning within the craft and of
re-segregation in the future. There are suggestions that
knowledge augmentation is developing as a feminised,
backroom pursuit, and also one that is utilised in the ser-
vice of male superiors performing, as one interviewee put
it, their ‘frontrunner’ role in the occupational hierarchy.
The investigation has lent support to the view that cog-
nitive and attitudinal gender biases are ubiquitous in pro-
fessional practice. We have presented evidence supportive
of the view that ‘actors draw in varying degrees on the cul-
turally convenient coordinating device of gender beliefs as
they carry out their work-related activities’ (Ridgeway,
2011, p. 93). Gender has been revealed as a widely shared
(by employers, employees and clients) and elemental basis
of ‘framing’. In insolvency there is evidence that both men
and women draw on essentialist notions when describing
their experiences. Gender thus continues to be a signi?cant
feature of everyday life in this profession. Indeed, as sub-
scribers to essentialist explanations increasingly acknowl-
edge, although its patterns may mutate, for as long as
individuals perceive themselves, their competencies, roles,
tasks and opportunities in gendered terms, occupational
segregation by sex will continue.
We conclude by discussing the implications of this and
our other ?ndings on the embeddedness of gender essen-
tialism for the pursuit of reform agendas. Charles and
Grusky (2004, pp. 306–311) contend that the diffusion of
liberal egalitarianism is likely to encourage the greater par-
ticipation of women in high status occupations and thus
erode the foundations of vertical segregation (also
Levanon & Grusky, 2012). However, they are less optimistic
about the prospect of the ‘second revolution’ necessary to
abrade horizontal segregation. Charles and Grusky (2004)
argue that liberal egalitarianism fails to challenge the
internalized essentialist assumptions of employers and
employees that undergird horizontal segregation. These
assumptions are instilled and sustained as a result of pow-
erful processes of socialisation and suggest that categorisa-
tion by sex will persist as a primary frame of social
relations (Ridgeway, 2011, pp. 188–200).
Commentators contend that horizontal segregation will
only be dismantled if a political consensus emerges around
a more profound form of egalitarianism; one recognising
that gender difference is a social construction and that
essentialist assumptions can be manipulated and seriously
challenged in social institutions. While Charles & Grusky
do not rule it out, evidently, a ‘second revolution’ is a dis-
tant prospect. History suggests that in the coming decades
‘essentialism may be transformed and reshaped, but will
not necessarily be weakened across the board’ (Charles &
Grusky, 2004, p. 311). In particular, the assumption that
women are suited to occupations associated with personal
service and nurturance is deep rooted, entrenched in
micro-level interaction and consequently ‘shows up in
almost every profession’ (p. 312).
The potency of gender-essentialism con?rmed by this
study also raises questions about women’s responses to
occupational segregation. Essentialism has long posed a
dilemma for feminist philosophers and activists and has
been the subject of lively debate since the 1970s (Stone,
2004; Stone, 2007, pp. 140–166; Phillips, 2010). While
anti-essentialist feminists object to the supposed existence
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 57
of universal sources of femininity as a social construction,
this denial reduces the prospect of the political mobilisa-
tion of women on the basis of shared and distinctive bio-
logical and cultural attributes. It raises a number of
dilemmas for women in the insolvency profession. Would
the position of women in the vocation be best advanced
by a radical agenda of contesting the gender-essentialist
foundations of occupational segregation? Or, should
women accept essentialism as inevitable and seek to ame-
liorate their position within the occupational niches they
currently occupy, with the likely consequence that male
domination of other specialisms will be further legitimated
(Morton, Postmes, Haslam, & Hornsey, 2009)? Should they
call for a quota of women in the masculinized sub-?eld of
corporate work and thereby subscribe to an implicit essen-
tialism (Mansbridge, 2005)? Or, should women assume a
‘strategic essentialist’ approach and positively use their
shared identity as a basis for collective action (Spivak,
1988)?
Since the 1990s, attempts to address gender inequality
have shifted from equal opportunities to diversity policies
(Noon, 2007). Indeed, diversity discourses and pro-
grammes have become increasingly evident in the profes-
sions of accounting and law, the occupations most closely
connected with insolvency practice (Edgley, Sharma, &
Anderson-Gough, 2014). In recent months they have sur-
faced in the occupation itself (R3, 2014). The persistence
of essentialism revealed in this study could be deployed
to legitimate remedies for gender inequality, such as diver-
sity management, which are far from radical. It resonates
with the contemporary focus on the rei?cation of separate
group identities, the politics of differentiation, and the con-
sequential displacement of more transformative agendas
to change androcentric cultural norms and pursue distrib-
utive injustice by abolishing the gendered division of
labour (Fraser, 1995). Adherence to assumptions about
the inevitability of essential gender differences encourages
accommodation rather than challenges to the foundations
of occupational segregation. Essentialism justi?es the
managerialist ‘business case’ for celebrating and exploiting
‘difference’ rather than eradicating the discrimination to
which it gives rise. Diversity policies, informed by assump-
tions of essentialism and individualism, effectively deem-
phasize the ‘structural and institutional issues of race,
ethnicity and gender discrimination’ (Kersten, 2000). They
encourage the search for ‘surface reallocations’ rather than
‘deep restructuring’ (Fraser, 1995).
The persistence of essentialism suggests that neither
diversity nor equal opportunities policies will dislodge
gender framing in workplace settings of the kind evi-
denced in this paper. In fact, new organisational structures
and procedures introduced to promote equal opportunity
and diversity may serve to further embed the salience of
gender. According to Ridgeway (2011, p. 122) ‘ironically,
the intended effects of these compliance procedures are
frequently implicitly blunted in the social relational pro-
cesses through which they are carried out’. Essentialism
is also strongly evident in diversity discourses – texts on
the subject conceptualize by reference to biological cate-
gorisations (Litvin, 1997). Other investigations suggest that
human resource managers may de?ne diversity by
reference to the socio-demographic traits of hypothetical
individuals and ascribe these ‘essences’ to groups (Zanoni
& Janssens, 2003). In law ?rms diversity agendas can for-
malise perceptions of difference founded on stereotypical
assumptions (Ashley, 2010). Progressive measures taken
in the name of diversity, such as the creation of ‘‘mommy
tracks’ and mentoring schemes for female employees,
effectively reproduce notions of gender-based segregation
(Kersten, 2000). Thus, the ?ndings of this study offer sup-
port to those critics of diversity who seek more radical
transformations and demand a ‘non-essentialist under-
standing’ of the concept (Zanoni, Janssens, Benschop, &
Nkomo, 2010), one which restores social justice arguments
to the reform agenda, and challenges the relations of
power and dominant ideologies in the organisation which
perpetuate inequality (Noon, 2007).
Acknowledgements
We are deeply appreciative of the enormous contribu-
tion made by our interviewees to the research project on
which this paper is based. Fiona Cof?eld offered excellent
research assistance and Ann Condick provided invaluable
insights to the insolvency profession. The authors are
grateful for comments received during presentations of
earlier versions of this paper at the University of Sydney,
Accounting Foundation Town and Gown Seminar, April
2012; and the EAA Annual Congress, Paris, May 2013.
The anonymous reviewers and Joni Young made many con-
structive suggestions which greatly improved the script.
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doc_573230847.pdf
Advances towards egalitarianism in professional recruitment may be offset by processes of
occupational re-segregation. Drawing on gender theory this paper investigates horizontal
segregation in the UK insolvency profession, as revealed through the lived experiences of
female and male practitioners. It is shown that horizontal segregation pervades at different
levels of practice and is undergirded by various elements of gender essentialism. Physical
essentialism explains why insolvency practice has been traditionally gendered male. Interactional
essentialism combines with the management of work-life balance to define the
subfields of corporate and personal insolvency as masculine and feminine respectively.
Gender essentialism and occupational segregation in insolvency
practice
Yvonne Joyce
a
, Stephen P. Walker
b,?
a
University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School, Scotland, UK
b
University of Edinburgh Business School, Scotland, UK
a b s t r a c t
Advances towards egalitarianism in professional recruitment may be offset by processes of
occupational re-segregation. Drawing on gender theory this paper investigates horizontal
segregation in the UK insolvency profession, as revealed through the lived experiences of
female and male practitioners. It is shown that horizontal segregation pervades at different
levels of practice and is undergirded by various elements of gender essentialism. Physical
essentialism explains why insolvency practice has been traditionally gendered male. Inter-
actional essentialism combines with the management of work-life balance to de?ne the
sub?elds of corporate and personal insolvency as masculine and feminine respectively.
Gender essentialist assumptions also pervade the distribution of roles and the allocation
of work tasks. Networks are identi?ed as arenas for the reproduction and perpetuation
of occupational segregation. The ?ndings indicate the continuing potency of gender in
everyday professional life, the limitations of diversity-orientated policies and the complex-
ities of formulating transformative agendas.
Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
We had been appointed as Receivers to a company that ran
a pub in Dundee, so I arrived (as one does) unannounced
and waving the of?cial appointment document. I told the
director that the Receiver would henceforth make all
the decisions and asked him to brief me on the business.
He was not a happy bunny. He pinned me up against a
wall and punched the wall on either sides of my head
telling me that if I wasn’t ‘a ??????? woman’ he’d have
punched my lights out. My colleague had to run out of
the premises to call the police, as his staff tried to prevent
the phone being used (in the days before we all had
mobiles). I’ve never been so pleased to be a woman!
[Condick, 2009]
Following the achievement of gender balance in
recruitment to the UK accountancy profession, academic
investigation has shifted to other areas of concern. In par-
ticular, research has focussed on the glass ceiling and the
principal impediment to women’s career progression –
combining a vocation with domestic commitments
(Dambrin & Lambert, 2008; Gallhofer, Paisey, Roberts, &
Tarbert, 2011; Lupu, 2012). While work-life balance con-
tinues to dominate academic study and praxis, a number
of allied gender issues remain substantially unexplored.
Prominent among these, in the wake of the increasing
specialisation of professional service provision, is the
emergence and consolidation of ‘gendered occupational
niches’ (Crompton & Lyonette, 2011; Crompton &
Sanderson, 1986), and the potential ghettoisation of
women in particular areas of practice (Khalifa, 2004;
Roberts & Coutts, 1992). Our intention in this paper is
to augment the sparse literature on gender segregation
in accountancy by investigating its presence, and thehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2014.12.001
0361-3682/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
?
Corresponding author at: 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9JS, UK.
Tel.: +44 131 651 5543.
E-mail address: [email protected] (S.P. Walker).
Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ aos
micro-level processes which sustain it, in a specialist sub-
?eld – insolvency practice. We thereby seek to contribute
to understandings of the persistence of gender issues in
the accounting profession during the post-equal opportu-
nities, diversity-conscious era.
It is no surprise that the formation and embedding of
gendered niches in professional occupations should con-
stitute an important issue. Recent studies of individual
vocations have identi?ed processes of re-segregation
and the marginalisation of women in particular special-
isms. The considerable expansion in the number of
women entering general medical practice has been
accompanied by the construction of a feminised niche
centring on women’s health care and ‘emotion work’
(Brooks, 1998). Women physicians tend to congregate
in people-centred family practice, paediatrics, obstetrics
and gynaecology (Ku, 2011). In the female dominated
occupation of nursing, men tend to specialise in
higher-paid, impersonal, technologically sophisticated
specialisms while women gravitate towards roles associ-
ated with caring, nurturing and empathy (Snyder &
Green, 2008). With the achievement of numerical
domination in veterinary practice women have become
clustered in the lower-paid, emotionally charged ?eld
of companion animal medicine (dogs and cats)
rather than large animal practice (Irvine & Vermilya,
2010).
Concern about occupational ghettoization is rendered
all the more pressing by studies which indicate that the
increasing access of women to careers in management
has been accompanied by a sharp increase in gender
segregation and ‘the entrenchment of other forms of
inequality’ (Cohen, Huffman, & Knauer, 2009). In the law
it has been contended that the apparent progressivism
suggested by rapid numerical feminisation veils the man-
ner in which women solicitors are ‘relegated to the less
prestigious and lucrative areas of practice’ (such as fam-
ily, employment, housing and bene?ts law), due to the
persistence of ideologies of gender difference; and are
subject to discrimination in the everyday life of the
profession (Bolton & Muzio, 2007, p. 48). In the solicitor
profession it has been argued that while barriers to the
entry of women have been broken, new forms of internal
closure have been instituted to preserve male privilege,
rewards and dominance. It has been suggested that gen-
der segregation represents a form of intra occupational
polarisation designed to protect the professionalisation
project of the male elite (Bolton & Muzio, 2008; also
Crompton & Sanderson, 1990).
1
In the accounting profes-
sion Roberts and Coutts (1992) argued that the increasing
location of women in marginalised niches constituted a
response by patriarchal forces to the threat posed by the
advancing feminisation of accountancy. Understanding the
gendered processes that facilitated such outcomes becomes
a research priority if forms of internal exclusion are to be
countered.
2
It is also clear that women in the accounting profession
do not comprise an undifferentiated, homogeneous group.
Experiences can vary signi?cantly according to factors such
as occupational specialism and the nature of the organisa-
tion in which work is performed and careers are built.
Abstract data illustrating the advancing proportion of
female members of the major professional bodies (from
24% in 2000 to 34% in 2010 in the UK) (Professional
Oversight Board, 2011, pp. 14, 32), together with general-
ised commitments to diversity programmes, and specula-
tion that cracks are appearing in the glass ceiling (Altman
& Simpson, 2000; Gammie, Gammie, Matson, & Duncan,
2007; Monks & Barker, 1996), veil a multiplicity of life sto-
ries. Studies of accounting professionals have revealed that
glass ceilings are thicker in some places (audit and corpo-
rate recovery) than others (taxation) (Gammie & Gammie,
1995). Women still report that opportunities for advance-
ment are often constrained. Revealing their experiences
continues to be a key object of the research agenda on
accounting and gender, and a potential source of its radi-
calisation (Broadbent & Kirkham, 2008; Haynes, 2008).
Our intention in this paper is to reveal the segregative
experiences of senior practitioners through a micro-level
analysis of the traditionally male-dominated sub-?eld of
insolvency. The study offers a distinctive contribution in
its deployment of concepts of essentialism to explain the
allocation of men and women to particular specialisms,
roles and tasks (horizontal segregation). We argue that
essentialism, the assignment of individuals on the basis
of assumptions about distinctively male and female traits,
is especially discernible in micro-level interactions and is
present not only in the construction of gendered divisions
of labour but also in the con?guration of professional
networks.
Our ?ndings con?rm the ubiquity of gender biases on
the basis of essentialism and we contend that this has
implications for the formulation of ameliorative agendas.
Although commentators often suggest that the male dom-
ination of the highest occupational statuses (vertical segre-
gation) may be eroded by liberal egalitarian policies, we
contend that addressing horizontal segregation is likely
to demand more radical, transformative responses. We
also argue that essentialism poses philosophical dilemmas
for those seeking to address occupational segregation. In
particular, the current-day focus on diversity management
effectively legitimates the notion that ‘essential’ biological
and cultural differences exist between male and female
and between masculine and feminine. Diversity agendas
therefore emphasise the separate gender traits and
1
Likewise, histories of the accounting profession reveal how male
solutions to the prospect of the admission of women centred on decoupling
female practice and practitioners from the malestream (Walker, 2011).
2
It should be stated at this juncture that not all recent commentators
have observed the persistence of sex segregation in the accounting
profession. Crompton and Lyonette (2011) found little evidence of it.
However they conceded that the aggregate level of their data might explain
this. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that analytical categories founded on
location of employment – that is, ‘in practice’, ‘in business’, ‘in the public
sector’ – would capture gendered clustering in particular communities of
practice or the existence of multiple knowledge-based specialisms exem-
pli?ed in the departments of practicing ?rms.
42 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
identities that may help to sustain occupational ghettoiza-
tion (Kornberger, Carter, & Ross-Smith, 2010).
The paper is structured as follows. In the next section
our theoretical approach is elaborated. Here we explain
our use of gender theories of occupational segregation
and, in particular, our deployment of gender-essentialist
explanations for the horizontal segregation we observe.
Subsequent sections introduce the insolvency profession,
its gender composition and the methodology employed
in the study. We then turn our attention to the analysis
of horizontal segregation. It is shown that gender-based
occupational niches founded on essentialism pervades in
various strata of professional experience – from the tradi-
tional masculinisation of the vocation as a whole to the
construction of sub-specialisms in corporate and personal
insolvency, and to role determination and the allocation
of work tasks. Attention subsequently turns to the contem-
porary importance of networks. These are revealed as are-
nas for the reproduction and institutionalisation of gender
segregation on the basis of essentialist assumptions. The
conclusion addresses the implications of our ?ndings.
Theories of occupational segregation
Occupational segregation, the tendency for men and
women to concentrate in different industries and occupa-
tional categories, is generally accepted as pivotal to under-
standing gender inequality, particularly as manifested in
the pay gap, but also in the wider unequal distribution of
status and rewards (Hakim, 2004, p. 145). Occupational
segregation constitutes a pervasive and immutable feature
of contemporary socio-economic systems. According to
Anker (1997, p. 315) ‘Occupational segregation by sex is
extensive in every region, at all economic development
levels, under all political systems, and in diverse religious,
social and cultural environments. It is one of the most
important and enduring aspects of labour markets around
the world’.
Two types of occupational segregation are convention-
ally distinguished. Vertical segregation concerns male
domination of the higher echelons of occupational status
hierarchies, irrespective of sector. For example, men dom-
inate partnerships in professional service ?rms where the
elevation of women is prevented by glass ceilings and
sticky ?oors. This has been the principal focus of gender
studies of the accounting profession. By contrast, horizon-
tal segregation, which has received much less attention,
relates to the manner in which women predominate in
particular industries, occupations, jobs and roles (such as
hotels, retailing, nursing, clerical and secretarial work)
while men preponderate in others (such as construction,
engineering, mechanics and mining) (Hakim, 1979;
Walby, 1988, p. 2). Hence, whereas vertical segregation
concerns strati?cations of rank and prestige, horizontal
segregation focuses on ‘distributional inequalities’ across
occupational categories (Charles & Bradley, 2009).
Numerous theoretical explanations for the emergence
of occupational segregation have been developed, reprised
and critiqued by various authors (eg Anker, 1997;
Blackburn, Browne, Brooks, & Jarman, 2002; Walby,
1988). Anker (1997) identi?es three broad categories:
neo-classical and human capital theories, institutional
and labour market segmentation theories, and feminist or
gender theories. The ?rst of these posits that occupational
segregation is the outcome of the pursuit of free, econom-
ically rational behaviour by employers and workers. Segre-
gation arises because women may be constrained by
factors that limit their capacity to accumulate capital and
occupy superior vacant statuses. The second broad cate-
gory stresses the role of corporations and unions in recruit-
ment and remuneration, the segmented nature of labour
markets, and the encouragement of segregation by
employers in order to dissipate the power of labour.
According to Anker (1997), while they are insightful and
help explain the gender pay-gap, theories rooted in
economics offer inadequate explanations for occupational
segregation by sex. In particular, they exclude the cultural
and social factors that impact on the assignment of work-
ers to jobs and impede the accumulation of human capital
by women. Anker contends, therefore, that feminist or gen-
der theories, the third category, offer more compelling
explanations for occupational segregation. These theories
suggest that segregation by sex is a consequence of patriar-
chal structures, and of the relationships and practices
which advantage males in the competition for access to
high status occupations in the public world of work. The
same structures relegate women to lower status jobs or
assign them to the privatised realm of the domestic.
Gender theory emphasises the manner in which occu-
pations are ?lled not on the basis of free rational choices
but on whether their performance demands the possession
of feminine or masculine traits, or the exhibition of gender-
de?ned behaviour. Women tend to populate those occupa-
tions that align with stereotypical assumptions of their
attributes such as caring (nursing, social work), compe-
tence in the household (cleaner, dressmaker) and attrac-
tive physical appearance (receptionist, shop assistant).
Likewise, masculine stereotypes explain the dominance
of men in occupations associated with physical strength
and aggression. Gender theories of occupational segrega-
tion assert that jobs become ‘sex-typed’ and their male or
female composition tends to reinforce the gendered identi-
ties of those who occupy them. One reason why such the-
ories are so compelling is because they help to explain the
seemingly enduring character of occupational segregation.
Indeed, segregation by sex has proved remarkably resil-
ient over time and space (Jonung, 1998; Middleton, 1988;
Olson, 1990; Stainback & Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012; Watts
& Rich, 1993). A recent study for the European Commission
(Bettio & Verashchagina, 2009, p. 37) discovered that
although there were differences between member states,
gender segregation remained high in the EU and rates
had remained substantially unchanged since 1992. Others
have observed that the advancing participation of women
in the labour force and the decline of gender inequality
in other areas has been attended by an increase in sex seg-
regation so ‘spectacular’ that the modern-day occupational
structure has been described as ‘hypersegregated’ (Charles
& Grusky, 2004, pp. 3–4). Moreover, the limited progress
made towards occupational desegregation in recent years
has been implicated in the stalling of the ‘gender
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 43
revolution’ that commenced in the 1960s and witnessed
the movement of women into male dominated ?elds such
as the professions (England, 2010, 2011).
The resilience of occupational segregation and its
apparent recon?guration in the wake of equal opportuni-
ties movements has encouraged a revisiting of extant the-
orisations (Hakim, 2004, p. 145). Hakim (1991, 1995, 1998)
for example, articulated a much criticised ‘preference the-
ory’, supportive of neo-classical and human capital expla-
nations. She contended that occupational segregation was
not imposed on women but re?ected their life choices
and work orientations – their preferences for different
forms of labour market participation. Some women are
‘uncommitted’ and choose to pursue occupations that are
secondary to their prioritisation of home-centred responsi-
bilities. Others, the minority, are ‘committed’ and career-
centred. Hakim (1991, p. 110) controversially asserted that
women had effectively ‘colluded in their own imprison-
ment in unpaid work in the home and low-paid, low status
jobs in the workforce’. Goldin (2002) by contrast, articu-
lated a ‘pollution theory’. This posits that the increasing
admission of women to male dominated occupations is
perceived as diminishing masculine prestige. This elicits
segregative responses in the creation of male and female-
typed occupations, equal in pay but unequal in status.
Gender essentialism and horizontal segregation
More recently, explanations for the sex-typing of occu-
pations and the persistence of occupational ghettos and
niches have stressed the role of gender essentialism.
Stone (2004, p. 138) de?nes essentialism as follows: ‘Philo-
sophically, essentialism is the belief that things have
essential properties, properties that are necessary to those
things being what they are. Recontextualised within femi-
nism, essentialismbecomes the view that there are proper-
ties essential to women, in that any woman must
necessarily have those properties to be a woman at all’.
Those properties may be biologically constructed (associ-
ated with sex = female/male) or socially constructed (gen-
der = feminine/masculine). They have comprised potent
forces for assigning women to particular functions and
spheres, such as child rearing and the domestic. According
to some psychologists humans tend to seek the ‘essence’
from complex information and their conceptual systems
are attuned to identifying ‘essential’ differences (sex, skin
colour, body shape) as well as sources of commonality.
These ‘essences’ are powerful sources of universal attribu-
tion and categorisation. They are expressed in stereotyping
statements such as ‘all women are caring and empathetic’
and ‘all Africans have rhythm’ (Phillips, 2010).
The foremost proponents of gender essentialist expla-
nations for the persistence of occupational segregation
are Charles and Grusky (2004). In their prize-winning work
on 10 industrialised countries the authors attempted to
explain a paradox – although the modern age has been
characterised by liberal feminism, equal opportunity
reforms, anti-discrimination measures and increased gen-
der integration in the professions, many occupations
remain segregated. Evidently, occupational segregation
co-exists with egalitarianism and advances towards
desegregation appear to be accompanied by processes of
re-segregation. Charles and Grusky (2004, pp. 12–15)
argued that existing (particularly economic) theorisations
fail to explain these complexities. Consistent with the
aforementioned gender theories they contend that vertical
and horizontal segregation fundamentally re?ects cultural
ideologies. Vertical segregation is underpinned by the per-
sistent notion of male primacy; that is, the assumption that
men are more appropriate occupants of elevated statuses
associated with the exercise of power and authority. Hori-
zontal segregation is maintained via the logic of ‘gender
essentialism’, the alignment of prototypical feminine and
masculine traits to job and task requirements based on cul-
tural assumptions about innate gender differences (Charles
& Bradley, 2009).
Such gender-essentialism is deeply embedded, perpetu-
ated by processes of socialisation, is sustained by popular
culture and the media, and reinforced by everyday interac-
tions with signi?cant others such as parents and teachers.
It endures at the micro-level through cognitive processes
that encourage actions consistent with ‘pre-existing ste-
reotypes’ and a tendency to ‘ignore, discount, or forget evi-
dence that undermines them’ (Charles & Grusky, 2004, p.
15). Examples of the ‘generative mechanisms’ underlying
segregation include employers making (discriminatory)
decisions on the basis of internalised essentialist presump-
tions ‘that gender provides a useful signal of individual
capacities for particular lines of work’ (e.g. nurtur-
ing = female, physical strength = male) (Charles & Grusky,
2004, p. 309). Likewise, employees might express occupa-
tional preferences on the basis of sex-typed expectations
and self-evaluations. Hence, ‘By virtue of repeated telling,
the essentialist narrative takes on a force that shapes
labour market outcomes’, it becomes ubiquitous and self-
ful?lling (Levanon & Grusky, 2012).
Subsequent studies have af?rmed the resilience and
potency of gender-essentialist ideologies in forming the
aspirations, life experiences and identities that sustain hor-
izontal segregation (Charles & Bradley, 2009). The search
for reasons why segregation on the basis of sex has proved
so intransigent also led Levanon and Grusky (2012) to
explore the forms and extent of essentialism in the wake
of the ‘gender revolution’. The authors developed a model
that identi?es its female and male-advantaging forms.
They discovered that physical, cognitive and interactional
variants of essentialism explains the ‘vast majority’ of
occupational segregation and concluded that segregation
remains ‘so extreme’ because its essentialist foundations
are durable and co-exist with the seemingly antithetical
notion of egalitarianism.
In the current study horizontal occupational segrega-
tion in the insolvency profession is explored through a
gender, and a gender-essentialist, lens. While we do not
pretend to investigate the deeper social and cultural pro-
cesses which reproduce and perpetuate stereotypes about
female and male traits, or their manifestation in the
recruitment and promotion decisions of ?rms, we do seek
to explore how horizontal segregation is maintained by the
alignment of prototypical feminine and masculine charac-
teristics with speci?c roles and work tasks. Previous to
analysing the extent and forms of horizontal segregation
44 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
by sex, and the structures and practices that sustain it, we
offer some background on our focal occupational group,
the insolvency profession.
The insolvency profession
Although it occupies a relatively small proportion of the
accountancy populace in the UK, insolvency practice is a
highly signi?cant and distinctive sub-?eld. In 2011–12
the top 50 accounting ?rms generated total fee income of
£449 m from insolvency work (Accountancy Age Top
50 + 50, 2012).
3
In addition to its socio-economic conse-
quences for the casualties of business failures, a large-scale
corporate insolvency is associated with ‘big money owed,
and big fees charged by those trying to sort it out’ (Flood
& Skordaki, 1995, p. 5). Academic researchers have shown
how the engagement of accountants in insolvency practice
was of considerable importance to the professionalisation
of accountants in Britain (Napier & Noke, 1992; Walker,
1995, 2004a); how insolvency work contributed to the
emergence of the accounting stereotype (Bougen, 1994),
and is the arena in which jurisdictional interfaces with the
profession of law are most evident (Walker, 2004b).
Structure
The professional space in insolvency is inhabited by
accountants, lawyers and others. Insolvency professionals
may be employed within an accounting, law or specialist
business recovery ?rm. Although it is a sub-?eld populated
mainly by professional accountants, it also boasts separate
institutional structures and sub-specialisms that render
the organisational allegiances and identities of practitio-
ners both complex and intriguing (Flood & Skordaki,
1995, pp. 37–38).
In 2007 the insolvency industry employed 12,700 insol-
vency practitioners, assistant accountants and solicitors,
and administrative and other support staff (The Value of
the Insolvency Industry, 2008, p. 20).
4
Insolvency Practitio-
ners (IPs), the most senior members of the profession, repre-
sented 14% of this total. Since the passing of the Insolvency
Act, 1986 only authorised individuals may act as IPs and
accept formal insolvency appointments, that is, hold of?ce
as a liquidator, administrator, receiver, or trustee in a bank-
ruptcy or sequestration. In Great Britain seven Recognised
Professional Bodies (RPBs
5
) are responsible for 92% of the
authorisations of IPs. The remaining licenses to practice
are granted directly by the Secretary of State for Business,
Innovation and Skills (BIS) through The Insolvency Service
(an executive agency of BIS responsible for insolvency regu-
lation) (Guide to the Insolvency Service, 2010). The RPBs and
the Secretary of State together comprise the ‘authorising
bodies’. In order to achieve authorisation it is necessary for
the prospective IP to pass the examinations of the Joint
Insolvency Examination Board (JIEB) and gain practical
experience.
6
The number of IPs authorised by each authoris-
ing body is shown in Table 1.
7
As the data in Table 1 suggests, many IPs are quali?ed
accountants. In fact, in 2007 49% of IPs worked in account-
ing ?rms, 39% in specialist insolvency ?rms and 12% in law
and other ?rms (The Value of the Insolvency Industry, 2008,
p. 20). It is possible for an IP to be a member of an accoun-
tancy body and also an organisation representing insol-
vency practitioners, such as the Association of Business
Recovery Professionals (known as ‘R3’
8
).
Not all insolvency practitioners take formal appoint-
ments (and thereby assume the title administrator, recei-
ver, liquidator or trustee).
9
According to data published by
The Insolvency Service, of the 1715 IPs, 1329 (77%) take such
appointments (2011 Annual Review, 2012, p. 10). By far the
most numerous formal appointments relate to processes of
personal insolvency. In 2011 IPs were appointed to act in
49,056 Individual Voluntary Arrangements and 2702 bank-
ruptcies. Less numerous, but more complex and remunera-
tive, are corporate insolvency procedures. In 2011 IPs were
appointed in 12,734 liquidations, 2805 administrations,
Table 1
Authorised insolvency practitioners in Great Britain as at 1 January 2012.
Source: 2011 Annual Review (2012, p. 10).
Authorising bodies N %
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and
Wales
694 40
Insolvency Practitioners Association 511 30
Association of Chartered Certi?ed Accountants 164 9
Law Society of England and Wales 135 8
Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland 102 6
Secretary of State 66 4
Chartered Accountants Ireland 32 2
Law Society of Scotland 11 1
Total 1715 100
3
The total fee income of the top 50 ?rms from all sources during the
same period was £10.3bn.
4
A different basis of calculation generated an estimate of 10,000 in 2008
(The Value of the Insolvency Industry, 2010, pp. 5–6).
5
The seven RPBs are the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England
and Wales (ICAEW), Association of Chartered Certi?ed Accountants (ACCA),
Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), Chartered Accoun-
tants Ireland (CAI), Insolvency Practitioners’ Association (IPA), Law Society
(LS), Law Society of Scotland (LSS). Insolvency legislation is devolved in
Northern Ireland. There, The Law Society of Northern Ireland is also an RPB
and the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment Trade can also
issue licenses.
6
This is in addition to a ‘?t and proper person’ requirement. Other
credentials, which do not secure authorisation, are the ICAEW’s Certi?cate
of Insolvency (a precursor to studying for the JIEB examination) and the
IPA’s Certi?cate of Pro?ciency in Insolvency (for staff employed in
insolvency who do not necessarily aspire to become licensed practitioners)
(R3, Making a Career as an Insolvency Practitioner).
7
The trend in the number of authorised IPs is not suggestive of a rapidly
expanding profession. The total of 1715 identi?ed in Table 1 compares with
1998 in 1990. Concerns are periodically expressed about an ageing
practitioner populace and the desirability of ensuring that the occupation
is perceived as an attractive vocation to future generations (Editor., 2005).
8
R3 (rescue, recovery, renewal) is a private limited company by
guarantee and operates as a not for pro?t organisation (https://www.r3.or-
g.uk/aboutr3/). R3 undertakes a number of functions, including the
provision of training courses and conferences, lobbying on behalf of the
profession, facilitating member networks, the publication of a quarterly
magazine and the development of best practice standards.
9
For example, a small number of IPs conduct monitoring and compliance
work within RPBs. Further, ?rm policy may restrict of?ce holder positions
to a small number of senior-level employees.
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 45
1397 receiverships and 767 company voluntary arrange-
ments (2011 Annual Review, 2012, p. 21). IPs also receive
appointments that do not invoke formal insolvency proce-
dures. These include corporate rescues and reconstructions,
and offering advice to individuals and businesses in ?nancial
distress (R3, Making a Career as an Insolvency Practitioner).
The advent of the ‘rescue culture’ in Britain generated ‘a
more dynamic, creative role’ for the insolvency practitioner,
and shifted the professional’s identity from ‘corporate
undertaker’ to ‘problem solver’ (Flood & Skordaki, 1995, p.
iii; The Value of the Insolvency Industry, 2008, p. 28).
Work
For the purpose of contextualizing the study it is impor-
tant to describe the work tasks performed in insolvency
practice. Corporate insolvency frequently engages the IP
as an administrator or receiver who locates and takes con-
trol of assets, manages employees, determines whether to
continue to trade, and deals with administrative matters
and statutory compliance (R3., 2008, pp. 9–22). Once con-
trol has been taken of the insolvent company the IP may
seek a buyer for the concern, addresses valuation issues,
processes redundancy payments, determines employee
claims for wages, pursues debtors, liaises with key suppli-
ers, holds meetings with creditors, and prepares necessary
correspondence, forms and reports. As the insolvency pro-
gresses, tasks include reporting to the creditors, preparing
accounts and pursuing any legal claims. Where the com-
pany is to be wound-up, liquidation procedures also
involve accounts preparation, reporting to creditors,
chasing debts, making distributions and dealing with
administrative formalities. Practitioner ?rms also perform
corporate work beyond formal insolvency procedures, such
as conducting investigations on behalf of banks. This might
involve visits to the company, composing ?nancial state-
ments, and assessing the entity’s strategic risks, market
position and expected returns should it enter insolvency
processes.
In relation to personal insolvency the main procedures
involving the appointment of an IP in Scotland, the focal
site of this research, concern bankruptcies (sequestrations)
and trust deeds (R3, 2008, pp. 23–28). In relation to the for-
mer, the IP administers the insolvent estate as a Trustee in
Bankruptcy. The trustee ingathers the assets and applies
the proceeds of their disposal to pay the costs of managing
the bankruptcy and satisfy the creditors. This involves
arranging formal notices, interviewing the client-debtor,
gathering evidence of assets, liabilities and their values,
holding meetings with creditors, inviting claims from cred-
itors and distributing ingathered funds to them, keeping
records such as court orders and minutes of meetings,
and producing accounts for approval by the Accountant
in Bankruptcy. Trust deeds involve the appointment of an
IP as trustee in a voluntary arrangement between the
debtor and her/his creditors. Under the deed the debtor
transfers property to the trustee who manages it on behalf
of the creditors. S/he ingathers and realises the value of
assets, adjudicates creditor’s claims and makes distribu-
tions to them, and prepares a letter to discharge the debtor
when the process is complete.
Gender composition
The upper reaches of the professional hierarchy in
insolvency, as indicated by the achievement of licensed
IP status, is substantially male dominated. Appointment
takers in many of the insolvency departments of large
?rms are predominantly men. While women may success-
fully progress through the of?ce hierarchy comparatively
few become IPs. At the end of the twentieth century the
fact that the ‘insolvency club’ was almost exclusively male,
was identi?ed as a source of homogeneity in a vocation
otherwise characterised by fractured allegiances (Flood &
Skordaki, 1995).
In their survey of the occupation in 1995 Flood and
Skordaki (pp. i–ii, 14) observed that 95% of authorised
insolvency practitioners were men. Our analysis of mem-
bership data showed that the percentage of male IPs in
the UK remains very high at 85%. The number of women
taking the JIEB examination has been increasing in recent
years and the consequential shifting demographic is
expected to erode rates of vertical segregation in the
future. A study of the insolvency profession in 2007 noted
that although ‘the average insolvency practitioner is
46 years old, male and is the head of department or man-
ager’, one half of IPs aged under 35 were women (The
Value of the Insolvency Industry, 2008, p. 13).
10
Our analysis of membership data uncovered some vari-
ations in rates of male domination between the major
?rms operating in the ?eld. Whereas the proportion of
male IPs was 80%, or less, in ?rms such as Deloitte, Ernst
& Young and PKF, it was closer to 90% in KPMG, PwC and
RSM Tenon. At Begbies Traynor, the largest employing ?rm
of IPs, the proportion was 87% and at Grant Thornton it was
as high as 95%. There was also some variation between the
several RPBs. Whereas 81% of IPs authorised by the ACCA
were men, the proportion was 91% for ICAS. In the focal site
of the study 92% of IPs authorised by ICAS and employed in
Big 4 ?rms were male as were 90% of IPs employed in non-
Big 4 ?rms. If attention is turned to IP members of R3
located in Scotland (irrespective of RPB) the extent of male
domination was marginally less, at 85%.
As in accountancy, lower occupational statuses within
the insolvency profession are predominantly ?lled by
women (Anderson-Gough, Grey, & Robson, 2005; Cooper
& Taylor, 2000). Their employment in administrative and
supportive roles often results in insolvency departments
and client teams mainly comprising women. In everyday
practice this numerical domination often serves to veil
and deproblematise the extent of male occupancy of the
senior statuses in the vocation (R3., 2014).
Methodology
Consistent with previous studies of gender and organi-
sational practices in accounting, the study is performed at
the micro-level (Anderson-Gough et al., 2005; Covaleski,
Dirsmith, Heian, & Samuel, 1998; Kornberger et al.,
2010). Our focus is on exploring commonplace practices
10
It should also be noted that among members of R3 who were not IPs
24% were women.
46 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
in a single occupational group. There are several reasons
for this orientation. Firstly, we are responsive to the notion
that gender should be investigated ‘as a routine accom-
plishment embedded in everyday interaction’ (West &
Zimmerman, 1987, p. 125). The operation of the mundane
microprocesses through which individuals ‘do gender’
offers insights to the ways in which gender hierarchies
and identities are created and sustained (Martin, 2001;
Poggio, 2006). Of particular importance to our investiga-
tion is the assumption that essentialist notions of mascu-
linity and femininity are most likely to be played out and
reproduced at the micro-level (Levanon & Grusky, 2012).
Secondly, exploring mechanisms at the micro-level has
assumed particular importance in the post-equal opportu-
nities era. While blatant sexism and gender bias are now
condemned, they often operate in subtle forms, uninten-
tionally, with liminal awareness, through non-re?exive
practicing (Martin, 2003; Martin, 2006). Unfair treatment
in the workplace tends to be manifested in ‘micro-inequi-
ties’ and ‘microaggressions’ – ephemeral, often covert
mechanisms of prejudice that are ‘small in nature, but
not trivial in effect’ (Rowe, 1990; Sue, 2010). Such practices
are more likely to be revealed through the investigation of
everyday experiences in speci?c, situated contexts
(Ridgeway, 2011, p. 28).
Thirdly, although students of horizontal segregation
tend to conduct macro-analyses of aggregative occupa-
tional categories and perform cross-national and longitudi-
nal studies, disaggregated research into individual
vocations is also encouraged (Crompton & Harris, 1998;
Weeden, 2004). Occupation-speci?c studies have the
potential to unveil the complexities of sex segregation.
Researchers in the ?eld concur that segregative phenom-
ena are thrown into sharper relief as the focal occupational
classi?cation becomes increasingly ?ne-grained
(Cockburn, 1988; Hakim, 1992, 2004). Indeed, it has been
suggested that the search for gendered ghettos might
extend not only to occupational specialisms but also to
their fragmentation into speci?c roles and work tasks
(Cockburn, 1988; Huffman, Cohen, & Pearlman, 2010). As
West and Zimmerman (1987, p. 143) remind us, gender
biases can be revealed through routine ‘issues of allocation’
and decisions about ‘who is to do what’.
Rendering the micropractices of gender segregation vis-
ible requires capturing individual experiences. Hence, the
research took the form of semi-structured interviews. The
interviewees were located in Scotland, the site of a number
of recent studies of gender and the accounting profession
(see, for example, Gallhofer et al., 2011; Gammie &
Gammie, 1995; Gammie et al., 2007) and where insolvency
practice is distinctive. Personal insolvency is devolved to
the Scottish government. Responsibility for legislation on
corporate insolvencies is divided between the Scottish
and Westminster governments. As will become apparent
later in the paper, this legislative-administrative context
has implications for the spatiality of appointment gaining
and the construction of networks.
Purposeful (non probability) sampling techniques were
deployed to identify interviewees. Our initial intention was
to select interviewees who were broadly representative of
the range of experiences of women working at a senior
level in the insolvency profession. We were also anxious
to include certain female practitioners whose knowledge
and position in the vocation rendered them especially
important sources of information. The published lists of
IPs proved useful in identifying potential interviewees,
though we also pursued individuals suggested by those
we had interviewed. As the study progressed our purpose-
ful approach to sample selection assumed a more sequen-
tial character (Teddlie & Yu, 2007). The strategy also
altered as our theorisation of the study developed in
unforeseen ways. While we did not embark on the project
with a view to pursuing a process of induction or grounded
theory, sample selection assumed a more theory-based
approach as gender essentialism emerged as an important
theme in our early interviews (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). In
particular, it became apparent that understanding per-
ceived differences between male and female experience
and the relational nature of gender (Alvesson & Due
Billing, 1997; Scott, 1986) required that we capture male
as well as female experiences. In consequence, six male
insolvency professionals were interviewed in addition to
thirteen women. The sampling ceased when the data
became suf?ciently dense and a point of saturation was
reached (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).
In 2007 it was estimated that just over 1000 people
were employed in the insolvency industry in Scotland
(The Value of the Insolvency Industry, 2008, p. 30). At the
point the project commenced, of the 106 IPs licensed by
ICAS and the Law Society of Scotland only 11 were women.
14.3% of the IP members of R3 located in Scotland were
female. It is generally perceived that the large accountancy
?rms and the Big 4 in particular, dominate the corporate
insolvency market and are more heavily involved in
administrations and corporate recovery work. Smaller
accountancy ?rms and specialist insolvency practices
dominate the liquidation market and personal bankruptcy
in Scotland. Our interviewees re?ected this distribution of
work. They were employed in the insolvency and corporate
recovery and restructuring departments of Big 4 multina-
tional accounting ?rms, other large ?rms, or smaller, local
practices. Although the research focused on accountants,
one interviewee worked in a law ?rm with a department
devoted to insolvency and distressed businesses. Other
interviewees were employed in ?rms that specialised in
the provision of insolvency and corporate recovery ser-
vices. Of those in practice, ?ve of our female respondents
worked primarily in corporate insolvency, ?ve in personal
insolvency, and two were occupied in both. All of our male
interviewees were employed mainly in corporate insol-
vency. The interviewees occupied a range of statuses –
from departmental managers (2), directors (3) and assis-
tant directors (2), to partners of ?rms (10) and their own-
ers (2). Most interviewees could boast one to two decades
in insolvency practice and their experience proved instruc-
tive in highlighting dynamic con?gurations of horizontal
segregation. As the interviewees were assured of anonym-
ity, ?ctitious names are deployed when testimony is
related in the remainder of the paper. Further details of
the interviewees are provided in Table 2.
Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews took place
from the end of 2010 through 2012. Those sampled for
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 47
interview were contacted by email or letter and informed
that the study concerned gender issues in the insolvency
profession. Assurances were given about con?dentiality
and anonymity. Almost all interviews were conducted at
the interviewees’ of?ce by one of the authors and a research
assistant. The duration of interviews ranged from 40 to
105 min. The interviews were audio-recorded and tran-
scribed with the exception of one instance where notes
were taken (at the request of the interviewee). Verbatim
transcription and manual coding was performed soon after
each interview (Gibbs, 2007, pp. 38–55). The printed tran-
scripts were reviewed for errors by the interviewers. Our
initial coding was a priori, the codes being drawn from
themes and concepts featuring in the previous literature
on gender segregation and the accountancy profession.
However, as the coding of successive transcripts was per-
formedadditional, groundedlabels beganto emerge, partic-
ularly in relation to gender essentialism and the activities
through which it was expressed (Ryan & Bernard, 2003).
As new analytical codes and sub-codes were created to
accommodate this emphasis, earlier transcripts were revis-
ited and recoded. Once the coding was completed copies of
the transcripts were cut and sorted by theme.
In order to contextualise the study it was important to
understand the gender composition of the insolvency craft.
As descriptive statistics relating to the whole profession
were not in the public domain, data relating to IPs was
sought from each RPB and by investigating their websites.
However, lists were only obtained for ICAS, LSS, LS and CAI.
We were advised by ICAEW and IPA that lists were not
publicly available. Consequently, an additional data source
was utilised. In the UK harmonisation of practice is orches-
trated by the Association of Business Recovery Profession-
als (R3). Formed in 1990 and representing 97% of all
licensed IPs, R3 claims to be ‘the leading trade body of
Business Recovery Professionals’.
11
The organisation has
two main classes of membership. Full members are
primarily licensed IPs
12
while Associates are those who do
not meet the requirements of full membership but work
substantially in business recovery. R3 publishes a directory
of insolvency professionals.
13
The directory for 2010 (the
year of the commencement of the project) contained the
names of 1432 full members and 602 members with associ-
ate status.
14
The data contained in the R3 directory, together
with that made available by the aforementioned RPBs,
proved especially useful for analysing the gender composi-
tion of the insolvency profession.
Having related the structure and composition of the
focal occupation attention turns in the next three sections
to examining the operation of gender-essentialism in cre-
ating segregative features at various levels of insolvency
practice. We begin by examining the importance of physi-
cal essentialism to the masculinisation of the sub-?eld as a
whole. Attention then turns to revealing how nurturant,
emotional and cognitive traits condition the gender com-
position of specialist ?elds of insolvency practice. We then
proceed to show that biological essentialism operates at
the level of role distribution and task allocation.
Essentialism and the masculinisation of the profession
The gender composition of the insolvency profession is
traditionally explained as a symptom of the potentially
dangerous character of the practitioner’s work. The con-
struction of the vocation as fundamentally masculine ema-
nates from what Levanon and Grusky (2012, p. 44) identify
as physical forms of essentialism – the assumption of male
strength and the ability to deal with hazardous situations.
The authors found that these forms of essentialism consti-
tuted an ‘extremely strong segregating force’ (p. 27). Phys-
ical essentialism is most obviously evident in the
uniformed services where tackling dangerous incidents
and the threat of violence emphasise the possession of
male strength. The women who eventually won entry to
male-dominated occupations such as law enforcement
were invariably assigned work related to child protection,
domestic violence and community relations – deemed
appropriate to their frail bodies and maternal and empa-
thetic instincts. Consequently, women police of?cers
became segregated as a ‘force within the force’ (Jackson,
2006, pp. 200–201; Brown & Heidensohn, 2000, pp. 43–
53; Grube-Farell, 2002; Miller, 1999, pp. 215–217). In the
military, women have traditionally been marginalised in
non-combatant roles and their presence is ‘camou?aged’
to protect the male hegemony of the institution
Table 2
Interviewees.
Interviewee Gender Age Children Firm
Aileen Female 30s No Big 4
Alasdair Male 50s Yes Large
Bridget Female 30s No Big 4
Carol Female 50s Yes Large
Ellen Female 40s Yes Small
Ewan Male 50s Yes Small
Gail Female 40s Yes Big 4
Heather Female 40s No Small
Ian Male 50s No Big 4
Isla Female 50s No Big 4
Lynn Female 40s Yes Medium
Malcolm Male 40s Yes Medium
Moira Female 50s No Large
Pam Female 50s Yes Not in practice
Robert Male 60s Yes Large
Rhona Female 30s Yes Big 4
Sonia Female 50s No Small
Stuart Male 40s Yes Big 4
Vivien Female 40s Yes Small
11https://www.r3.org.uk/uploads/documents/R3 Members
info.pdf.
12
More accurately, full membership is available to licensed IPs, or those
eligible for a license; individuals who have passed the Joint Insolvency
Board (JIEB) examination; lawyers (including The Bar) who work substan-
tially in the corporate recovery and insolvency arena and who are full
members of the Insolvency Lawyers Association (ILA); Chartered Surveyors
who are (a) members of a recognised professional body and (b) a full
Member of the Association of the Non-Administrative Receivers’ Associa-
tion (NARA) and (c) a Registered Property Receiver.
13
Available at:http://www.r3.org.uk/media/documents/membership/
Membership_Info_Sheet_2012.pdf.
14
Note the number of full members of R3 differs from the total number of
IPs identi?ed in Table 1. This arises because of timing difference between
the dates of the two data sources and because not all IPs are members of R3.
48 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
(Weinstein & D’Amico, 1999). In other contexts physical
essentialism tends to gender low-status manual work as
masculine. However, in the case studied here it privileges
the recruitment of men to a high status profession.
According to Flood and Skordaki (1995) the potentially
perilous nature of insolvency work helps explain why the
profession has not been perceived as an attractive vocation
for women. They reported as follows:
As a male Cork Gully insolvency partner suggested:
‘‘insolvency can involve nasty situations, such as having
to enforce a con?scation order on drug traf?kers. . .it
has been known for insolvency practitioners to be
threatened at gun point in such situations’’
(Maudesley-Thomas, 1994). The dynamic, hero-like
approach required of the insolvency practitioner was
also conveyed to us by most of our interviewees (in
the majority male).
[Flood & Skordaki, 1995, p. 14]
Recruitment material emphasises that insolvency prac-
titioners need the skills to deal with anxious creditors,
directors and employees (R3, Making a Career as an
Insolvency Practitioner). Insolvency administration can
involve con?ictual situations that are tense at best, and
hostile at worse. The IP’s ultimate responsibility is to the
creditors. Anger may be expressed at meetings of creditors
confronting the possibility that debts may not be recov-
ered, or workers who may be threatened with the prospect
of unemployment. Physical violence on such occasions
may be rare but the threat of it is omnipresent. One of
our interviewees noted that some insolvency partners have
two cars, ‘a Golf and a fancier car’. The Golf is taken out on
jobs because it creates a more appropriate impression and
the cost of any damage wreaked by discontented parties is
less (Rhona).
Women who do enter the profession can encounter
intimidating situations. With few exceptions our female
interviewees referred to the confrontational nature of the
work. One related how she and a colleague arrived at a
car showroom to pursue a liquidation only to witness a
customer smashing up the reception area. The customer
was aggrieved that he had parted with £2500 for a car he
was not going to receive. They had locked themselves in
a room, one saying to the other ‘it’s a good job we’re
women’ (Sonia). Another described her involvement in
the emotionally charged insolvency of a football club
where the threat of violence against the directors was high
and the anger of the supporters was not assuaged by the
free ?ow of alcohol. Another interviewee stated that she
hated search warrants due to the threat of violence. On
one occasion she arrived on site to discover that the person
on whom the warrant was served had been previously
charged with culpable homicide (Heather).
Though one or two considered such views out-dated,
our interviewees often referred to the way in which threat-
ening situations rendered the craft more suitable for those
possessed of masculine physicality. Robert related that:
you have to deal with aggressive people, people who are
dif?cult. You’re standing in front of 200 guys just before
Christmas, all of whom have been made redundant and
they’re saying to you things like ‘it’s ok for you, you’ve
got your kids Christmas presents’.
[Robert]
Ewan observed that some of the work involved ‘dealing
with quite aggressive people’. Indeed, two male intervie-
wees related episodes where they had been threatened
by an aggrieved party armed with a shotgun. Alasdair com-
mented that ‘issues of ?sticuffs are not too far away’. A
number of women interviewees also perceived that insol-
vency was traditionally seen as ‘a macho area’ because of
the potential for confrontation and belligerent behaviour
(Rhona). According to Rhona this was ‘not a job for the
faint hearted’. Heather’s early experiences revealed the
urgent need to ‘toughen up’: ‘The ?rst six months were
horrendous. It was dealing with evicting people’ (Heather).
Isla related: ‘some women would ?nd the sort of decisions
that you have to make very dif?cult. I’m talking about clos-
ing businesses, making people redundant and having to
deal with the aftermath of that’ (Isla). By contrast, for
men these situations might offer the prospect of a ‘power
trip’ and an opportunity to ‘kick some ass’ (Heather).
Essentialism and the gendering of specialisms
While physical essentialism has traditionally been
deployed to construct the insolvency ?eld as masculine,
other forms of essentialism, such as those emphasising
the nurturant, emotional, interactional and cognitive traits
of women, de?ne the gender composition of its particular
specialisms. In recent times the numerical feminisation of
professional occupations has been accompanied by
increasing horizontal segregation. Its prevalence appears
to increase the more ?ne-grained occupations are catego-
rised and analysed. Female-typed specialties emerge as
women concentrate in areas of practice (such as paediat-
rics in medicine) associated with gendered assumptions
about the female predilection for nurturing. In the legal
profession the concentration of women solicitors in family,
employment and housing law re?ects the manner in which
these areas are ‘de?ned in terms of allegedly female traits
such as empathy, consideration and personal support and
are contra-posed to traditionally male domains such as
the cut-throat world of corporate law, with its cold calcu-
lating logic and its emphasis on masculine traits such as
ruthlessness, assertiveness and endurance’ (Bolton &
Muzio, 2008, p. 286).
As this suggests, the construction of emotional labour
(‘the labour involved in dealing with other people’s feel-
ings’ (James, 1989, p. 15)) as feminine, is a potentially
important factor in horizontal segregation. Associated with
the low-skilled, unrecognised performance of the caring
and empathising function in the privatised world of the
domestic, emotional labour in the workplace is invariably
essentialised as the ‘natural’ province of women (James,
1989). It is marginalised as emotive rather than rational
work, as supportive rather than productive work, as the
province of semi professionals (social workers, nurses,
paralegals) rather than full professionals (Pierce, 1995,
pp. 83–102). In consequence, those (women) who perform
emotional labour command lower economic rewards and
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 49
suffer devalued social status (Guy & Newman, 2004). In the
focal profession of the current study, the essentialist
association of women with the emotional and nurturant
is manifest in the feminisation of the specialist ?eld of
personal insolvency.
As related earlier, insolvency represents a sub-?eld pri-
marily located within the generic accountancy profession.
While our respondents often referred to the permeability
of the boundaries between them, the primary division of
the craft they identi?ed was between ‘corporate’ and ‘per-
sonal’ insolvency. This con?guration of specialisms
re?ected distinctive regulatory contexts and the different
markets for each class of work. The corporate/personal
division tended to be institutionalised in the guise of sep-
arate departments or teams. One of the women IPs inter-
viewed described the insolvency market as ‘polarised’:
. . . into personal and corporate, I think that’s happened
inevitably as a result of changes in corporate legislation
and personal insolvency... You tend to ?nd as a rule, and
it is a generalisation, [that] . . . the big four specialise in
corporate insolvency and some of the bigger medium
sized ?rms have a well-founded corporate presence . . .
who do a bit of personal on the side. And then there
are the other providers who are, if you like, bulk provid-
ers of personal insolvency who maybe do a bit of corpo-
rate on the side. . .There’s fewer now who are what I
would call a general practice who do corporate and per-
sonal equally . . .There will be some medium sized ?rms
who will sit in both camps but as a general rule practi-
tioners go one way or the other.
[Ellen]
Heather con?rmed that personal and corporate insol-
vency had become distinctive competencies. While there
were exceptions, once established in one of the two spe-
cialisms, there was limited scope for transferring to the
other. There were few ?rms where staf?ng was ‘inter-
changeable’ (Heather).
The differences between corporate and personal
insolvency work have implications for the emergence of
gendered specialisms, the construction of glass walls
between them, and thus for the creation of an additional
level of horizontal segregation. A number of themes in par-
ticular emerged from our study. First, the lower status, less
glamorous ?eld of personal insolvency was perceived as a
specialism for the deployment of ‘natural’ female attri-
butes and the performance of emotional labour. While
women may achieve career advancement to partnership
in personal insolvency, this area of practice is associated
with small-medium ?rms where salaries are compara-
tively low. Second, personal insolvency was considered
attractive to many women because it offered greater
opportunities to achieve work-life balance. Third, the mas-
culinised ‘corporate’ specialism was assumed to have
higher status than the feminised ‘personal’ branch of prac-
tice. A clientele of individuals struggling with credit card
debt or failure to make mortgage repayments is unlikely
to match the reputational rewards of working on high pro-
?le corporate engagements. As one interviewee related:
‘people who work in corporate tend to think that you settle
for personal insolvency because they are ‘off’ doing the
‘real work’’ (Heather). Another suggested that data collec-
tion on this aspect of the study would be akin to interview-
ing ‘a very junior doctor and a senior consultant’ (Isla).
The extent to which personal insolvency could be gen-
dered female was articulated by an IP in an insolvency ?rm
comprising groups of corporate and personal staff. She
reported that whereas the corporate team was populated
by both sexes, the personal insolvency team was entirely
female. Recent attempts to recruit a personal insolvency
administrator attracted women candidates only: ‘I don’t
have the opportunity to get a bloke even if I wanted to’
(Heather).
Gender-essentialism was a foremost frame of reference
among our interviewees when explaining the division of
labour between specialisms. It was generally assumed that
men and women were possessed of distinctive qualities
that could be deployed in particular practice arenas. Isla
suspected that there was something in their ‘make up’ that
rendered corporate cases ‘more easy for a man to do than
for a woman’ (Isla; Aileen). Personal insolvency was con-
sidered the appropriate arena for the expression of the
assumed predilection of women to perform emotional
work. As Heather noted, a distinguishing characteristic of
personal insolvency is that it involves ‘dealing with indi-
viduals’ and situations where feminine attributes of caring
and offering emotional support were important. By con-
trast, while it could be a place for utilising these character-
istics too, corporate work was the appropriate domain for
the expression of masculine aggression, con?dence and
impassivity. Lynn, who worked in the corporate recovery
department of a large accounting ?rm, stated that staff in
this specialism tended to be ‘louder’ and ‘more con?dent’;
‘we’re more in your face because we have to be’ (Lynn).
Women IPs often took satisfaction from the fact that
their advice could restore domestic tranquillity and pre-
serve the household and family. Heather explained a pref-
erence for personal insolvency because it can ‘keep a
family in their house and the husband in his job and the
mother working, and the kids . . . I get more satisfaction
on the personal side’ (Heather). Emotional attachments to
clients can prove enduring. In corporate work by contrast,
there could be greater distance from the human conse-
quences of insolvency and therefore scope for greater
alignment with male dispassion. The case tended to focus
on identifying and valuing assets and liabilities in the
knowledge that limited liability for the debts of the busi-
ness will insulate its owners from the worst consequences
of ?nancial failure. In personal insolvency assets such as
the family home could be at risk. The insolvency practi-
tioner is therefore ‘dealing with somebody’s personal cir-
cumstances, you’re dealing with their life’ (Sonia).
Heather stated that in such cases ‘you’re almost acting as
a counsellor and an advisor’ and there is scope for the dis-
play of feminine sympathy.
Other essentialist feminine attributes of sociability
were aligned to the demands of personal insolvency.
Women interviewees boasted a better ‘bedside manner’
and ‘empathy with people’ (Aileen) than their male col-
leagues. Women were ‘aware of the pain’ of personal insol-
vency and were more sympathetic as a result (Pam).
Bridget observed that women were generally ‘a bit more
50 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
softly, softly’ and ‘a bit more touchy feely’ (Bridget). The
empathetic qualities of women were noted by several
interviewees, including Robert, an insolvency partner,
who observed that ‘I do ?nd that females are better listen-
ers so had lots of cases where the girls come, particularly
on personal bankruptcy cases’ (Robert).
The embeddedness of these gendered assumptions also
appear to extend beyond the practicing ?rms. Moira sus-
pected that those who refer cases of personal insolvency
to practitioners might also be in?uenced by gender attri-
butes, among other factors:
On the personal insolvency front, when you’re dealing
with a network of referrers, they quite often like a
woman because people are sometimes in a very fragile
situation when they’re coming to you, particularly for
personal insolvency advice.
[Moira]
The suggestion that women are perceived as experts in
the personal–emotional aspects of practice and the impli-
cations of this for the creation of horizontal segregation
at the level of specialisms resonates with the earlier ?nd-
ings of Flood and Skordaki (1995). Their study, which
focussed on large-scale business failures, suggested that
while women who were too caring might not last long in
the vocation, the few females therein were assuming cus-
todianship of its ‘human side’. The authors noted that
‘the human dimension of insolvency work has so far been
?agged as an issue primarily by women insolvency practi-
tioners’. This gendered province had been institutionalised
through the formation of an International Women’s Insol-
vency & Restructuring Confederation (IWIRC) which
explored the role of women in the vocation and ‘the human
dimension of insolvency work’ (Flood & Skordaki, 1995, p.
25).
The foregoing thus tends to con?rm England’s (2011, p.
160) contention that ‘In some cases, ending up in female-
intensive sub?elds results from discrimination, but in oth-
ers it may result from. . .gender essentialism’. It should be
recognised however, that the construction of personal
insolvency as a feminine specialism also rests on the
assumption that the work is more of?ce-based and offers
greater scope for women to balance work and family com-
mitments. This feature is con?rmative of its lower status as
a primarily feminised niche. Personal insolvency could
involve servicing a large number of small cases that might
be accommodated within a nine-to-?ve working day.
15
Those engaged with a small number of large corporate cases
could not easily manage their diaries in this way. Sonia,
related that the former was not reducible to conventional
working hours. It involved:
long, long hours, up early in the morning, travelling
there and everywhere, back home at 10 o’clock. . . I sup-
pose when you are in your 20’s or early 30’s it’s not so
bad but later on you start to think I want more of a
life. . . then I started doing personal. It was still long
hours and a lot of work but there wasn’t so much having
to go out, not being out of the of?ce all day and I . . .
thought this is actually quite interesting as well.
[Sonia]
She stated that in corporate work ‘if a bank phones you
at 5 o’clock and say I want to appoint you as Receiver for
this company, you can’t say ‘oh can it wait until the morn-
ing’, you’ve just got to go’ (Sonia). Weekend working was a
distinct possibility. Carol con?rmed that corporate work
involved long hours that didn’t always ‘lend itself to a fam-
ily life’. Corporate cases are also ‘transaction driven’ result-
ing in the practitioner being ‘constantly at the demand of
the client’ and working to deadlines set by the client. Work
routines are less predictable and ?exible or part-time
working arrangements are not feasible. Consequently,
organising ones life ‘can all get a little on the messy side’
(Carol).
Rhona con?rmed that personal insolvency was ‘mostly
of?ce based’, offered scope for more regular hours and
was therefore ‘probably more suited to females’. In some
instances there was the possibility of ?exible working. In
contrast to corporate work, cases tended to concern indi-
viduals who themselves preferred to operate during regu-
lar hours of business. The manner of its regulation, as well
as court-related diary ?xtures, also tended to confer
greater structure to personal insolvency and created more
manageable working days. Here, our interviewees also
referred to cognitive essentialism. One male interviewee
observed that women were more organised, neater and
considered in their approach to work than men. Another
male interviewee af?rmed that while corporate work
required spontaneity, supervision and co-ordinating oth-
ers, the processes of personal insolvency involved ‘a lot
more what I would call, ‘administrative’’ (Ewan), form ?ll-
ing and desk-based tasks which were increasingly
assumed to fall within the province of the feminine.
Essentialism, role distribution and task allocation
Gender essentialism in insolvency practice was also evi-
dent at the level of task allocation and role distribution.
Here physical/biological essentialism was again present.
In their recent study Levanon & Grusky (2012, p. 9) recog-
nise the possibility that:
As the genders come together in the workplace, deeply
entrenched essentialist precepts may inform decisions
about how tasks should then be divided among them,
with the result being a strengthened ‘‘micro-essential-
ism’’ informed by presumed gender skills, aptitudes,
and tastes.
In their research on audit ?rms Anderson-Gough et al.
(2005, p. 479) discovered instances ‘of a gendering of
labour in dealing with particular tasks at clients’. Of partic-
ular relevance to the current study, they related the case of
a trainee auditor who had been asked to perform insol-
vency work. The trainee suspected that she was sent out
on jobs involving redundancies because she was a woman.
Following their earlier illustration of the pervasive nature
15
A survey in 2010 also revealed that the average hours worked by IPs
engaged exclusively in corporate insolvency was higher (48.4 per week)
than those engaged in personal insolvency only (44.6) (The Value of the
Insolvency Industry, 2010, p. 10).
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 51
of ‘the client’ in the discourse of the ?rm(Anderson-Gough,
Grey, & Robson, 2000), the authors argue that such gen-
dered practices are legitimised by ?rms as ‘client prefer-
ences’. The primacy of serving the client also features in
other professions such as law (Sommerlad, 2002). When
masculinities are mobilised and con?ated with work prior-
ities it is very dif?cult for women to escape or contest them
(Martin, 2001). There is a long history of the manner in
which the allocation of tasks to women or ethnic minori-
ties has been conditioned by reluctance to offend the cli-
ent, irrespective of the resultant injustice served on the
personnel concerned and the reinforcement of offensive
stereotypes (Hammond, 2002; Walker, 2011).
As the instance discovered by Anderson-Gough et al.
(2005) suggests, the gendered allocation of certain tasks
is evident in insolvency and is activated by the need to pro-
gress ‘the case’. There is, however an additional dynamic in
this sub-?eld, one which emanates from the aforemen-
tioned threats to the physical security of the practitioner.
The allocation of tasks and distribution of roles is informed
by essentialist assumptions about the gender composition
of a potentially hostile client–audience.
Althoughthe possibility of con?ict has traditionally been
articulated as a reason why insolvency is male dominated,
those women who achieve access to the profession may
encounter situations where their gender, and in extreme
situations, their sexuality, is deployed as a resource to dif-
fuse the potential for confrontation. In occupations such
as advertising women may be utilised as ‘exhibitional
objects’ to help win clients (Alvesson, 1998). In policing,
where the extent of gender-differentiated deployment is
an enduring issue (Brown & Heidensohn, 2000, pp. 88–92;
Westmarland, 2001, pp. 17–45), there is a perception that
when aggressive force is required to address violent inci-
dents it is appropriate to send in male of?cers. But in con-
?ictual situations where there is the potential for violence,
policewomen may be engaged to ‘de-escalate’ – their empa-
thetic, communication and negotiating skills serving to
defuse hostility (Blok & Brown, 2005, p. 32; Miller, 1999,
pp. 215–226). Thus, different ‘essential’ traits are drawn
upon in response to distinctive scenarios – male physical
strengthor female interaction. Inthe case of insolvency, evi-
dence suggests that the biological female is enlisted and
‘displayed’ to pacify male aggression.
The latter practice was most candidly discussed by Rob-
ert, the head of an insolvency practice:
If you go out and you’ve got an aggressive situation I
usually surround myself with pretty young blondes . . .
I remember on one occasion . . . a demolition company,
they were bears in there, great big gorillas of guys com-
ing off huge lorries. . .I thought even I’m scared of this
lot. And they were furious, they hated their boss
because the business had gone bust. . .At the end of
the day we said look, you can stay as long as you like
with Jane. She will take down all your particulars and
make sure you get your redundancy and stuff like that.
Jane had a low top on and you could see these guys sit-
ting there like puppies waiting for their shot to sit oppo-
site Jane. So, I’ve used it [gender] to my advantage.
[Robert]
Robert also asserted that he had resisted the tendency
of older partners not to send women on jobs where hostile
encounters were likely. These most commonly involved
aggressive male industrial labourers working in districts
of socio-economic deprivation. This tendency he found
upsetting: ‘I’d say of course you can, they might hit me
but they won’t hit her’ (Robert). Malcolm af?rmed that
the presence of women practitioners could prove bene?cial
in volatile situations ‘where directors have got really
uptight about things, but having a female there certainly
helped calm things down’ (Malcolm). Another reported
that in the ‘distressed environment’ of insolvency ‘females
on jobs can bring a calming in?uence’ (Stuart). One male IP
related that where the prospect of a hostile company direc-
tor existed ‘you think well, would he really kick her head
in, whereas he might give me a real pasting’ (Ewan).
The gender source of hostility could be mutable, context
speci?c, and the composition of the insolvency team might
be con?gured accordingly. Women insolvency practitio-
ners reported instances where the allocation of staff could
be determined by the gender demographics of the
workforce:
Yes gender does help in the job. . .[if] you’re going out to
make 25 people redundant that work on a building site
and John Smith goes to tell them, the men are immedi-
ately going to be aggressive. You put a woman up there
and the stereotypes kick in. As much as the men might
want to be mouthy they’re not going to threaten you...
The opposite side of that is, try and make 25 women
redundant and as a woman you will get it in the neck.
[Lynn]
Bridget, an insolvency manager in a large ?rm, con-
?rmed that gender was an elemental frame of reference
in determining staf?ng con?gurations for particular jobs.
Although informing 200 male employees that the company
had gone bust was undoubtedly ‘unnerving’ it might help:
. . .that you are female, because although they will shout
and bawl there are no physical issues. Whereas I have
also seen where it’s been a male colleague who’s stood
up and done the same and they have almost been phys-
ically attacked which they wouldn’t necessarily have
done to a woman . . .You think put a woman up there
because they won’t attack her but put a guy up and they
will. . . It just depends on the businesses you go into.
[Bridget]
Sonia recalled that the presence of a woman and the
deployment of essential feminine, as opposed to mascu-
line, traits could prove bene?cial:
. . .years ago if we went out on a liquidation on the ?rst
day say, we would ?nd that if women were there the
men, the employees, always reacted better because
they didn’t want to start having a go. Whereas if a guy
was saying to them ‘you’re actually going to be made
redundant today’, well, they could kick off ... If it was
a woman saying ‘I’m really sorry but this is what’s going
to happen’, that always seemed to calm things down.
[Sonia]
52 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
Some of the more experienced practitioners perceived
that there was now less manipulation of gender than in
the past and that the speci?c non-gender attributes of
the individual practitioner vis-à-vis the case scenario was
more important in task allocation and role distribution
(Carol). But others af?rmed its continuing relevance. There
was ‘still a view’ that ‘you can’t hit a female and you can’t
hit somebody in front of a female either, whereas if you put
two guys out there. . . there’s just testosterone’ (Ellen;
Pam).
Interestingly, the responses of female insolvency pro-
fessionals to everyday gender-based inequities founded
on essentialist notions often appears to take the form of
asserting technical competence in the craft. This, in turn
encourages the emergence of new forms of segregation
on the basis of re-gendered competencies. Several of the
women interviewed performed various technical functions
within the profession or their ?rms. These included lectur-
ing for professional organisations, and assuming internal
risk compliance and training roles. Sonia referred to a
well-known female IP as follows: ‘I’ve heard men saying
what she doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing and if they’re
having a discussion they ask, ‘Ellen, what do you think?’’
(Sonia). A male interviewee argued that men and women
in his of?ce went about their work in different ways. When
an issue arose a male practitioner’s instinct would be to get
on the phone and sort it out whereas a woman would
‘think about it, analyse it’ and was ‘more likely to pull
out the Insolvency Act’ (Ian). Such a gendered allocation
of competence may form a future source of horizontal re-
segregation. The ?ndings suggest that at present, techni-
cally able women at manager level are highly respected
as knowledge-feeders to male superiors, who as IPs devote
more time to front of house and out of of?ce work such as
networking and business development.
It is thus apparent that at the level of task allocation
and role distribution there continues to be ‘everyday reli-
ance on the gender frame’ and evidence of gender essen-
tialism in client interactions (Ridgeway, 2011, p. 185). We
have in the insolvency profession an example of ‘manag-
ing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of
attitudes and activities appropriate to one’s sex category’
(West & Zimmerman, 1987, p. 127). When women are
assigned to, and perform, insolvency work involving male
audiences they effectively ‘produce enactments of their
‘‘essential’’ femininity’ which reinforce and reproduce
gender stereotypes (West & Zimmerman, 1987, p. 144).
The same also applies when male practitioners are
selected for tasks involving hostile female audiences.
These practices are characterised by their re?exivity. Gen-
der is not mere ‘background’ but is activated intentionally,
for a purpose, in full awareness of the gender dynamics to
be responded to and the gendered solution to be opera-
tionalized (Martin, 2003; Martin, 2006). According to
Martin (2006) gender is rarely practiced in the workplace
in this way. She refers to instances where a male boss un-
re?exively acts to rescue women in trouble. In contrast, in
insolvency practice we have observed a deliberate use of
gender to protect men, in particular, from threats to their
physical security.
Networks, segregation and essentialism
Charles and Grusky (2004, p. 16) suggest that gender-
de?ned networks constitute mechanisms that can perpet-
uate occupational segregation. Networks may ‘reproduce
and amplify forms of segregation that have their sources
in essentialist processes’ (Charles & Grusky, 2004, p. 20).
In relation to horizontal segregation the social activities
associated with networking tend to consolidate gender-
de?ned areas of practice. They serve to entrench occupa-
tional boundaries, reinforce the segregation of specialisms,
roles and tasks, and, where male-de?ned, question female
participation and encourage ‘auto-exclusion’ (Bolton &
Muzio, 2007, p. 57). Further, network construction is
impacted by in and out-group biases which are informed
by gender stereotyping and this tends towards homosocial
reproduction in the workplace (Ridgeway, 2011, pp. 110–
112). In the case of the insolvency profession in Scotland
the outcome of these processes has been the emergence
of gender segregated, and in the case of women, a gen-
der-de?ned institutionalised network. Before explaining
this development we ?rst explore the importance of net-
working in the insolvency profession and reveal its role
in consolidating essentialist-based segregation.
It is established that in modern accounting and other
professional service ?rms, participation in the everyday,
social process of networking and achieving the nomencla-
ture of ‘networker’, are not only central to securing career
advancement they are also elemental signi?ers of profes-
sional competence and identity (Anderson-Gough, Grey,
& Robson, 2006). So much so that Anderson-Gough et al.
(2006, pp. 239–240) contend that ‘not to be a networker,
is to face almost an abyss – the pure negation of selfhood
implied by being a ‘nobody’’. The informalism of male net-
works constructed on the basis of shared interests, such as
sport and drinking, and their resultant discourses, may
serve to exclude and alienate women (Anderson-Gough
et al., 2005; Collinson & Hearn, 1994).
The importance of networking in insolvency has already
been suggested. In her study of lawyers, Sommerlad (2002)
referred speci?cally to the way in which women insol-
vency practitioners were obliged to learn the ‘invisible
code book’ of the laddish drinking culture which features
in this specialism. A key feature of insolvency is the way
in which practitioners secure work and establish a position
in the marketplace for professional services. This relies
heavily on developing relationships with those who may
refer cases, such as senior bank personnel, solicitors,
accountants and revenue and customs of?cials. As our
interviewee Robert put it, insolvency practice is ‘all about
the people you know and whether they trust you’. Indeed,
insolvency personnel from accountancy ?rms are often
seconded to major banks to nurture business connections.
The major banks establish formal or informal ‘bank panels’,
membership of which can be necessary to gain work from
this source. In a highly competitive market, developing
these networks is seen as important to practice develop-
ment and career building.
Our ?ndings tend to con?rm that these networks
primarily comprise male elites drawn from connected
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 53
occupational hierarchies. Their signi?cance here lies in the
fact that such networks are especially important in corpo-
rate insolvency where they reinforce the masculinisation
of the specialism. According to Ian the network of IPs,
senior insolvency lawyers, bankers and other work provid-
ers constitute a ‘very male dominated’ community. As
Bridget said, ‘the guys are all part of that boy’s club’. Isla
stated that ‘there’s just that sense of all boys together’.
Carol con?rmed that women had limited access to net-
works, ‘women haven’t been in senior roles where they
have to build and maintain a business, so what do they
do if they don’t do the golf course, the football, the rugby,
where do they build their client base, how do they retain
their client base?’ Rhona, from a Big 4 ?rm, also alluded
to the disadvantages of not participating in male sports.
In relation to marketing activity: ‘a lot of the clients prefer
golf, football or rugby. . . I don’t play golf so therefore it
kind of precludes you from doing those events. I go to
the rugby and football occasionally but it’s not something
that I’d actively do, but we do try’ (Rhona). Business devel-
opment, or bringing in new corporate insolvency clients,
was described as a critical element in constructing a suc-
cessful career. To the extent that marketing and socialising
events took place after work, women with children were
considered to be disadvantaged because they often
excluded themselves from these activities.
Networking itself was often perceived by our respon-
dents as an essentially masculine pursuit. Moira, a partner
in a smaller, female dominated, practice indicated that cer-
tain networks are so gendered male that her ?rm was dis-
advantaged in the competition for work because it lacked a
resident man who could operate in that arena: ‘one of the
problems that we have with the banks, for example, is that
we don’t have senior men that can go out and network
with the senior men in the banks. . . most of the decision
makers in the banks are men’ (Moira). To remedy this sit-
uation the ?rm had inaugurated a ‘hunt for men’ to ful?l
this role. A male would be:
. . .much more likely to be chatting about the football
world for example. If you are with a bunch of guys that’s
what you’re going to be talking about. We had some
men that we were entertaining recently and a couple
of my colleagues came through from Glasgow. It was
summertime and I joined them for breakfast before
they headed off to the cricket. I’ve absolutely no doubt
that the chat when I was in the room would be com-
pletely different to when I left and they went off to
watch the sport . . .I know nothing about cricket. I can
only speak about it on a very super?cial level.
[Moira]
Our interviewees cited problems of access to male-
dominated networks as a factor that sustained the mascu-
linisation of corporate work and the concentration of
women in personal insolvency. In explaining gender segre-
gation Isla observed that in corporate insolvency:
. . .until relatively recently most of the work would’ve
come from bankers and most of the bankers would’ve
been male. Undoubtedly there would have been a
culture . . .which I think has eroded [since the banking
crisis] to some extent [of] boys drinking lots of pints
down the pub and then going to a lap dancing club.
It’s quite hard to do that if you’re a woman.
[Isla]
Lynn, who has particular expertise in personal insol-
vency, related that while the male partner assumed
responsibility for targeting those ‘slightly higher up the
food chain’, she was ‘quite happy to see the people who
are further down’ (Lynn). Given the nature of the work per-
sonal insolvency involved a ‘different type of marketing
because you can’t necessarily take these people to lunch’
(Lynn). One male respondent, who asserted that network-
ing was an inclusive activity engaging the whole senior
insolvency team, offered revealing insights to a potentially
gendered distribution of responsibility when explaining
how networks were managed:
We’ll have a list of the teams in the banks that we want
to stay close to. Within those teams there’ll be individ-
uals, and some of those individuals I’ll effectively man
mark, the top guys, and I’ll say I want to be seeing them
two, three, four times a year. . .and then I rely on the
rest of the team to pick up the rest.
[Ian, emphasis added]
The institutionalisation of gender-segregated networks
Faced with limited access to male networks, women
insolvency practitioners have tended to cultivate their
own and thereby consolidate gender segregation in this
increasingly important dimension of professional activity.
Interviewees reported that their networks mainly com-
prised other women and operated differently to those pop-
ulated by men. Within the spatial con?nes of the closely
de?ned market for insolvency services in Scotland most
women are acquainted with the other women in the sub-
?eld. Rhona also suggested that women were more ‘com-
fortable marketing and selling to other women, organising
female events’ (Rhona). Lynn, for example, related her
involvement in a networking event focussed on a ‘Take
That’ concert. The event was directed towards the small
community of female bankers only. She found the experi-
ence ‘good fun’ and an opportunity to ‘bitch about the
men’ (Lynn).
The business and social relationships that women built
through their networks were also gender-de?ned and
re?ected essentialist notions of female sociability. This
rendered them more enduring and deep rooted than those
constituted by men. Aileen observed that men did not
seem to need to ‘get on that well’ to do business. They
could ‘get together, play a game of golf, have a chat and
that’s the job done’. By contrast ‘ladies probably take a
while to get to know each other but when they do they
become more attached’ (Aileen).
The most tangible manifestation of the existence of
gender-segregated networks is their institutionalisation.
In the case of one Big 4 ?rm the protestations of women
about the predominance of events centring on football,
rugby and golf, resulted in the establishment of a separate
programme of networking events exclusively for female
54 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
staff and clients. These involved feminine activities such as
lunching and visits to upmarket fashion and jewellery
stores (Ian). More signi?cantly, in 2008 the Scottish
Women in Insolvency Group (SWIG) was founded by Judith
Howson, an assistant director of corporate recovery with
Deloitte, Glasgow. Its object is to provide ‘a networking
forum to help business development challenges faced by
women working in the industry’ (Insolvency Group,
2008). An article reporting the existence of SWIG illus-
trated the manner in which it represented a reaction to
the exclusionary character of male sociality:
Fed up being a non-golfer, in an industry that seems to
prize 18 holes as the ultimate networking event? Judith
Howson, a corporate recovery expert with Deloitte in
Glasgow, feels exactly the same way.
With the domination of activities which show a prefer-
ence for what men might be interested in, she decided
to set up her own group to attract women in the profes-
sion.
[Howson, 2008]
Bridget recalled that it was tentatively suggested that
male insolvency practitioners might respond by establish-
ing a ‘SMIG’ (Scottish Men in Insolvency Group). To this
prospect she had countered ‘you guys have all your gol?ng
and football . . . so don’t give me that nonsense’ (Bridget).
Aileen related that while men could be supportive of SWIG,
on an ‘off day’ some in the of?ce:
. . .might say ‘oh we’re going to set up Scottish Men in
Insolvency Group. It’s not right that you go off and do
these things with women. We don’t do that, we don’t
have a group’ and I’ll say ‘well you do because when
do I ever come to watch the football with you?.
[Aileen]
Social activities organised by SWIG are innately femi-
nine and diametrically opposed to the male obsession with
football and golf. As Ellen related: ‘We think, well, you go
off and play golf. The vast majority of us don’t, don’t want
to do it. So we have things like pamper days, and girly
things instead’ (Ellen). The activities represent an essen-
tialist assertion ‘that women do things differently to guys’
(Aileen). Meetings of SWIG usually involve technical sem-
inars. These are followed by:
something slightly female focused. One year we had a
chocolate fountain, one year we had seasonal fashion
trends for business dressing, one year we had a spa
afternoon where they [the members] could have spa
treatments, partner-up with somebody they maybe
haven’t met before and then all go out for dinner. So
the events aren’t necessarily something that guys are
going to be interested in.
[Aileen]
Men are not excluded from SWIG, and on occasion a
small number attend its meetings, particularly when the
organisations to which they belong sponsor an event.
However, akin to the marginalisation that women often
experience at male-dominated events, the attending male
is represented as ‘the token guy sitting in the corner’
(Bridget). Ellen related how on the occasions that
men attended SWIG gatherings ‘they get the piss taken
out of them something rotten. They kind of put themselves
up as the token male and accept that that is their role’
(Ellen).
Not all women were supportive of the SWIG venture
due to the message of gender segregation it symbolised.
Vivien asked ‘is it the right thing to do, to set up a female
only part of something when what you are trying to do is
make sure there is no distinction between the genders?’
(Vivien). Others feared being labelled a ‘feminist’ or
objected to being identi?ed by their sex rather than their
professional ability. There were also suggestions that
because it had largely emerged as a counter to male hom-
osociality its activities were too heavily focused on the
social. Vivien, asked ‘what value added does it give me as
a professional?’ (Vivien). Heather doubted whether gather-
ings of women were suf?ciently cognisant of the realpoli-
tik – the need to address the fundamental problem of
accessing male networks rather than formalising the gen-
der boundaries around them. One interviewee fundamen-
tally disagreed with ventures that separately identi?ed
women and consolidated gender-centred relationship
building. She indicated that in her city there existed:
a women’s insolvency forum. I don’t want to go to a
women’s insolvency forum. I don’t want to go to a
women’s networking event. How does that help me?
That doesn’t give me the business links. That introduces
me to other women ... Great for meeting people but
from a business networking point of view in insolvency,
there are so few women up there in high positions that
actually to network [with other women] is pointless.
You need to be networking with the blokes, you need
to be networking with the [Inland] Revenue, you need
to be networking regardless of gender.
[Heather]
Rhona was also concerned that gender segregated net-
works run the risk of disconnecting women from the pow-
erful men at the head of organisational hierarchies in the
masculine world of corporate insolvency: ‘you can’t just
network with women because the decision makers, espe-
cially if you’re doing corporate work, in the banks, will be
males’ (Rhona).
One response to the networking problematic of women
insolvency practitioners is a greater emphasis on technical
matters. It was suggested that marketing might be
extended beyond socialising towards knowledge sharing.
For example, given that bankers now faced greater restric-
tions on what entertainment they could accept, offering
regular technical presentations and staff training work-
shops on insolvency-related subjects were constructive,
more professional, modes of building relationships. This
was ‘very good PR. You get lots of people in a room at
the same time and it demonstrates your technical abilities
as well’ (Rhona). Such activity might also reinforce the
aforementioned potential source of re-segregation in
the future, the feminine association with technical
competence.
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 55
Discussion and conclusions
This study was inspired by the possibility that apparent
advances in the recruitment and career mobility of women
in the generic accounting profession may veil the reaction-
ary emergence of other forms of gender discrimination
such as horizontal segregation. It has recently been reas-
serted that the ‘sex segregation of occupations and jobs is
the deepest and most pervasive gender structure in the
organisation of paid work’ (Ridgeway, 2011, p. 99). Occu-
pational sociologists have observed that while assaults on
inequality and the rise of egalitarianism have increased
women’s access to higher education and the labour market,
these features have been accompanied by greater occupa-
tional segregation (Charles & Bradley, 2009; Charles &
Grusky, 2004).
The study has attempted to reveal the presence of hor-
izontal segregation and the processes which sustain it in a
specialist sub-?eld of the accounting profession – insol-
vency practice. Our ?ndings show that such segregation
pervades at the levels of occupation, specialism and task
and is underpinned by varieties of gender essentialism. It
is suggested that physical essentialism – the assumption
of male strength and the presumed ability of men to deal
with potentially hazardous situations encountered in prac-
tice – explains why the sub-?eld of insolvency practice has
been traditionally gendered male. We contend that nurtur-
ant, emotional and interactional forms of essentialism
combine to construct practice specialisms within the sub-
?eld as masculine and feminine respectively. We argue
that physical and interactional essentialism conditions
the distribution of roles and the allocation of work tasks.
It is suggested that essentialism is a basis for the ampli?ca-
tion and reproduction of segregation in increasingly
important arenas of professional activity such as
networking.
In common with the ?ndings of studies of other profes-
sions, divisions of labour in insolvency were often
informed by cultural assumptions of gender-essentialist
attributes. Hence corporate insolvency was deemed a more
appropriate arena for the expression of masculine aggres-
sion, careerism, detachment and informalism. Personal
insolvency not only involved the scheduling of work in
ways which were more conducive to women achieving
work-life balance, it was also a sub-specialism in which
the ‘natural’ feminine attributes of caring, empathy and
concern for family, could be most usefully deployed. Essen-
tialist assumptions about the gendered division of emo-
tional labour thus sustained occupational segregation.
Our ?ndings are therefore consistent with Charles and
Grusky’s (2004, p. 27) view that ‘durable essentialism sup-
ports gender-typical identities and behaviours and thereby
preserves horizontal sex segregation in modern labour
markets’.
However, the mere identi?cation of segregated sub-
specialisms founded on essentialism presents too simplis-
tic a picture of the everyday operation of gender in insol-
vency practice. As Charles and Grusky (2004, pp. 315–
316) also remind us ‘essentialist precepts’ are particularly
entrenched ‘in micro-level interaction’, and their power
tends to be expressed ‘at a very detailed level’ (Levanon
& Grusky, 2012, p. 34). Our ?ndings at the level of the dis-
tribution of roles and allocation of work tasks reveal pat-
terns of horizontal segregation undergirded by
con?gurations of work-body alignment – the nature of
the work may determine the gendered identity of the prac-
titioner body deemed most appropriate to perform it
(Ashcraft, 2013). In scenarios involving the potential for
con?ict, case/client-focused adjustments take place in
ways that exploit essentialist gender attributes. Although
some respondents suggested that such episodes were less
prevalent than in the past, the prospect of hostile encoun-
ters with the creditors, directors and/or employees of
insolvent concerns ensured that the primary basis of task
allocation continued to be the sex composition of the client
populace. Most notably, where the latter was predomi-
nantly male, female insolvency personnel might be
deployed in the expectation that a feminine presence
would appease agitated men. Such assignments con-
structed the physical woman as a paci?er, in contrast to
the enforcer role of the more powerful male.
The results of the study thus suggest that physical
essentialism operates beyond perceived differences in
male and female ‘strength’, its principal attribute in the lit-
erature (Levanon & Grusky, 2012). Assumptions about gen-
dered bodies appear to have informed decisions about
labour deployment and thereby contributed to the segre-
gation of individual work tasks, roles and sub-?elds. And,
as a number of the examples reported in the paper indi-
cate, some of these gender dynamics could be overt as well
as subtle.
The aforementioned con?guration of sub-specialisms in
insolvency and the allocation of staff to certain types of
work on the basis of sex and gender resonate strongly with
West and Zimmerman’s (1987, p. 127) de?nition of gender
as ‘the activity of managing situated conduct in light of
normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropri-
ate for one’s sex category’. Investigation of both of these
topics has also revealed periodic reversions in insolvency
practice to some essentialist notions of male aggression
and detachment, and female characteristics of caring and
emotional engagement. The study con?rms that the exis-
tence of ‘female-intensive sub?elds’ is sustained by the
persistence of ‘the notion that men and women are
innately and fundamentally different in interests and skills’
(England, 2010, p. 150).
In his review of feminist and gender theories of occupa-
tional segregation Anker (1997) identi?ed 13 stereotypical
characteristics of women that may effect occupational seg-
regation by sex. A number of these traits have been
strongly evidenced in this study of the insolvency profes-
sion. First, ‘lesser willingness to face physical danger and
use physical force’ has been advanced as the historical rea-
son why the occupation was deemed unsuitable for
women. Second, for those women who do enter the voca-
tion, their ‘attractive physical appearance’, and in some
cases ‘sex appeal’ has been used to avert the prospect of
male violence. Third, the ‘caring nature’ of women has
been deployed in con?ictual encounters with male clients
and their employees, and helps explain the concentration
56 Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60
of women in the specialism of personal insolvency. Fourth,
‘greater interest in working at home’ has been identi?ed as
an explanation for the concentration of women in personal
insolvency practice. The ?ndings also suggest that Anker’s
list of stereotypical traits might extend beyond a narrow
conception of occupation and workplace. Given the signif-
icance of networking to modern professional life we might
also add ‘disinclination to enjoy football and golf’ and the
consequential formation of gender-de?ned networks as
factors sustaining horizontal segregation.
Indeed, the current study has shown that essentialism
featured large in the construction and maintenance of net-
works. Although male practices in this respect appear to
have been largely non-re?exive, women were highly sensi-
tive to their impacts. Given its signi?cance to corporate
insolvency in particular, they were irritated by their exclu-
sion from the arenas where male homosociality was forti-
?ed, particularly those relating to sport (Anderson-Gough
et al., 2005). The most tangible demonstration of their mar-
ginalisation was the creation and institutionalisation of a
separate women’s group with the speci?c purpose of
developing alternative, gendered-de?ned sets of business
and social connections. The manner in which the SWIG
emphasises cultivating networks among women, organ-
ising social events around decidedly feminine interests,
and subjecting attending ‘token males’ to mild ridicule,
are suggestive of the extent of women’s perceived alien-
ation from the professional malestream and their own seg-
regative reactions to it. These reactions too, draw heavily
on essentialist precepts of gender difference. Women’s
response to the hegemony of homosocial males is to effec-
tively nurture female homosociality in ways that reinforces
their status as the ‘other’ and consolidate the gender segre-
gation evident in other areas of professional practice.
Such shifts in patterns of segregation offer insights to
the dynamics of the gender structuring of professions.
They point to the enduring centrality of gender in occupa-
tional placements and work allocations and the manner in
which these dynamics are played out in the context of the
primacy of the male professional project. Segregation and
re-segregation have long been understood as patriarchal
strategies for retaining the male domination of occupa-
tions associated with the highest economic rewards and
social status (Witz, 1992, pp. 25–35). Studies suggest that
the development of feminine niches is designed to pre-
serve masculine professionalisation projects threatened
by increasing feminisation (Bolton & Muzio, 2008;
Roberts & Coutts, 1992). These arguments have potency
in the professional sub-?eld examined in this paper. Ini-
tially, the lucrative ?eld of insolvency was discursively
legitimated as male on grounds of the hazardous nature
of the work (Flood & Skordaki, 1995). It is suggested that
as women successfully entered the vocation they were
accommodated in less remunerative specialisms aligned
to their essential feminine traits. Subsequently, network-
ing assumed increasing signi?cance to career advancement
and processes of homosocial reproduction facilitated the
disproportionate congregation of males in this activity.
There are signals that women are being relegated to tech-
nical support roles and this may become a new, gender-
de?ned source of positioning within the craft and of
re-segregation in the future. There are suggestions that
knowledge augmentation is developing as a feminised,
backroom pursuit, and also one that is utilised in the ser-
vice of male superiors performing, as one interviewee put
it, their ‘frontrunner’ role in the occupational hierarchy.
The investigation has lent support to the view that cog-
nitive and attitudinal gender biases are ubiquitous in pro-
fessional practice. We have presented evidence supportive
of the view that ‘actors draw in varying degrees on the cul-
turally convenient coordinating device of gender beliefs as
they carry out their work-related activities’ (Ridgeway,
2011, p. 93). Gender has been revealed as a widely shared
(by employers, employees and clients) and elemental basis
of ‘framing’. In insolvency there is evidence that both men
and women draw on essentialist notions when describing
their experiences. Gender thus continues to be a signi?cant
feature of everyday life in this profession. Indeed, as sub-
scribers to essentialist explanations increasingly acknowl-
edge, although its patterns may mutate, for as long as
individuals perceive themselves, their competencies, roles,
tasks and opportunities in gendered terms, occupational
segregation by sex will continue.
We conclude by discussing the implications of this and
our other ?ndings on the embeddedness of gender essen-
tialism for the pursuit of reform agendas. Charles and
Grusky (2004, pp. 306–311) contend that the diffusion of
liberal egalitarianism is likely to encourage the greater par-
ticipation of women in high status occupations and thus
erode the foundations of vertical segregation (also
Levanon & Grusky, 2012). However, they are less optimistic
about the prospect of the ‘second revolution’ necessary to
abrade horizontal segregation. Charles and Grusky (2004)
argue that liberal egalitarianism fails to challenge the
internalized essentialist assumptions of employers and
employees that undergird horizontal segregation. These
assumptions are instilled and sustained as a result of pow-
erful processes of socialisation and suggest that categorisa-
tion by sex will persist as a primary frame of social
relations (Ridgeway, 2011, pp. 188–200).
Commentators contend that horizontal segregation will
only be dismantled if a political consensus emerges around
a more profound form of egalitarianism; one recognising
that gender difference is a social construction and that
essentialist assumptions can be manipulated and seriously
challenged in social institutions. While Charles & Grusky
do not rule it out, evidently, a ‘second revolution’ is a dis-
tant prospect. History suggests that in the coming decades
‘essentialism may be transformed and reshaped, but will
not necessarily be weakened across the board’ (Charles &
Grusky, 2004, p. 311). In particular, the assumption that
women are suited to occupations associated with personal
service and nurturance is deep rooted, entrenched in
micro-level interaction and consequently ‘shows up in
almost every profession’ (p. 312).
The potency of gender-essentialism con?rmed by this
study also raises questions about women’s responses to
occupational segregation. Essentialism has long posed a
dilemma for feminist philosophers and activists and has
been the subject of lively debate since the 1970s (Stone,
2004; Stone, 2007, pp. 140–166; Phillips, 2010). While
anti-essentialist feminists object to the supposed existence
Y. Joyce, S.P. Walker / Accounting, Organizations and Society 40 (2015) 41–60 57
of universal sources of femininity as a social construction,
this denial reduces the prospect of the political mobilisa-
tion of women on the basis of shared and distinctive bio-
logical and cultural attributes. It raises a number of
dilemmas for women in the insolvency profession. Would
the position of women in the vocation be best advanced
by a radical agenda of contesting the gender-essentialist
foundations of occupational segregation? Or, should
women accept essentialism as inevitable and seek to ame-
liorate their position within the occupational niches they
currently occupy, with the likely consequence that male
domination of other specialisms will be further legitimated
(Morton, Postmes, Haslam, & Hornsey, 2009)? Should they
call for a quota of women in the masculinized sub-?eld of
corporate work and thereby subscribe to an implicit essen-
tialism (Mansbridge, 2005)? Or, should women assume a
‘strategic essentialist’ approach and positively use their
shared identity as a basis for collective action (Spivak,
1988)?
Since the 1990s, attempts to address gender inequality
have shifted from equal opportunities to diversity policies
(Noon, 2007). Indeed, diversity discourses and pro-
grammes have become increasingly evident in the profes-
sions of accounting and law, the occupations most closely
connected with insolvency practice (Edgley, Sharma, &
Anderson-Gough, 2014). In recent months they have sur-
faced in the occupation itself (R3, 2014). The persistence
of essentialism revealed in this study could be deployed
to legitimate remedies for gender inequality, such as diver-
sity management, which are far from radical. It resonates
with the contemporary focus on the rei?cation of separate
group identities, the politics of differentiation, and the con-
sequential displacement of more transformative agendas
to change androcentric cultural norms and pursue distrib-
utive injustice by abolishing the gendered division of
labour (Fraser, 1995). Adherence to assumptions about
the inevitability of essential gender differences encourages
accommodation rather than challenges to the foundations
of occupational segregation. Essentialism justi?es the
managerialist ‘business case’ for celebrating and exploiting
‘difference’ rather than eradicating the discrimination to
which it gives rise. Diversity policies, informed by assump-
tions of essentialism and individualism, effectively deem-
phasize the ‘structural and institutional issues of race,
ethnicity and gender discrimination’ (Kersten, 2000). They
encourage the search for ‘surface reallocations’ rather than
‘deep restructuring’ (Fraser, 1995).
The persistence of essentialism suggests that neither
diversity nor equal opportunities policies will dislodge
gender framing in workplace settings of the kind evi-
denced in this paper. In fact, new organisational structures
and procedures introduced to promote equal opportunity
and diversity may serve to further embed the salience of
gender. According to Ridgeway (2011, p. 122) ‘ironically,
the intended effects of these compliance procedures are
frequently implicitly blunted in the social relational pro-
cesses through which they are carried out’. Essentialism
is also strongly evident in diversity discourses – texts on
the subject conceptualize by reference to biological cate-
gorisations (Litvin, 1997). Other investigations suggest that
human resource managers may de?ne diversity by
reference to the socio-demographic traits of hypothetical
individuals and ascribe these ‘essences’ to groups (Zanoni
& Janssens, 2003). In law ?rms diversity agendas can for-
malise perceptions of difference founded on stereotypical
assumptions (Ashley, 2010). Progressive measures taken
in the name of diversity, such as the creation of ‘‘mommy
tracks’ and mentoring schemes for female employees,
effectively reproduce notions of gender-based segregation
(Kersten, 2000). Thus, the ?ndings of this study offer sup-
port to those critics of diversity who seek more radical
transformations and demand a ‘non-essentialist under-
standing’ of the concept (Zanoni, Janssens, Benschop, &
Nkomo, 2010), one which restores social justice arguments
to the reform agenda, and challenges the relations of
power and dominant ideologies in the organisation which
perpetuate inequality (Noon, 2007).
Acknowledgements
We are deeply appreciative of the enormous contribu-
tion made by our interviewees to the research project on
which this paper is based. Fiona Cof?eld offered excellent
research assistance and Ann Condick provided invaluable
insights to the insolvency profession. The authors are
grateful for comments received during presentations of
earlier versions of this paper at the University of Sydney,
Accounting Foundation Town and Gown Seminar, April
2012; and the EAA Annual Congress, Paris, May 2013.
The anonymous reviewers and Joni Young made many con-
structive suggestions which greatly improved the script.
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