Women Making Partnership in Professional Service Firms: Shifting the Plateau
| | Women making partnership in Professional Service Firms: Shifting the Plateau |
Hosted by the Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity (CRED) and the Accounting & Accountability Research Group (AARG) at QMUL
September 7th 2023 12-1pm (British Summer Time)
Professional Service Firms are amongst our biggest private sector employers and Big-4 firms in particular invest heavily in equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives and interventions – also to achieve gender equality across their ranks. Nevertheless, while women's access to professional service firms has improved vastly over the past 25 years, the proportion of women making partnership has plateaued at just over 20%.
In her new book, Gendered Hierarchies of Dependency, Dr Patrizia Kokot-Blamey explores the reasons behind this stickiness from a cross-national comparative perspective, emphasizing international differences in how hierarchies and careers are negotiated, and covering topical issues such as job security, the role of performance management systems in entrenching inequality, sexual harassment at work, work-life balance, and becoming a mother on the way to partnership.
The event will start with a 10-minute overview of Kokot-Blamey's key findings after which our expert panel will explore questions such as:
- What can firms do to increase the proportion of women at the top?
- What can we learn from how hierarchies in Professional Service Firms are negotiated in other countries?
- How can men too become changemakers for gender equality in the workplace?
- And what steps are necessary to achieve lasting cultural change?
Our expert panel includes:
Dr Patrizia Kokot-Blamey, author of Gendered Hierarchies of Dependency: Women Making Partnership in Accountancy Firms which will be released by Oxford University Press on August 10th 2023. Patrizia is a Senior Lecturer in Organization Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, where she is a member of the Centrefor Research in Equality and Diversity (CRED). She holds a Ph.D in Gender Studies from the LSE and writes on women and the professions, fertility and employment.
Professor https://www.essex.ac.uk/people/kelan34901/elisabeth-kelan. Click or tap if you trust this link." data-loopstyle="linkonly" data-linkindex="13" style="margin: 0; text-decoration: underline; color: #954F72">Elisabeth Kelan is a Professor of Leadership and Organization at Essex Business School, University of Essex. She currently holds a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship to explore the future of work, digitalization, and gender. She is author of four books. Her most recent book https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/men-stepping-forward. Click or tap if you trust this link." data-loopstyle="linkonly" data-linkindex="14" style="margin: 0; text-decoration: underline; color: #954F72">Men Stepping Forward: Leading Your Organization on the Path to Inclusion was published by Bristol University Press in 2023. She also published numerous peer-reviewed articles in leading academic journals.
Dr Katharina Luh is a partner with EY, leading the German Change & Learning team and also responsible for the Change Experience community in Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA). She holds a PhD from the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture at the University of Giessen, where she previously led the Cultural Management Consortium (CMC) and the research group on Gender Studies and Intersectionality. She worked as a business journalist for Deutsche Presse Agentur before moving into cultural management.
Professor Suki Sian (Chair) is Professor of Accounting at Queen Mary, University of London where she leads the Department of Accounting and Financial Management and is a member of CRED and the Accounting & Accountability Research Group. She has published widely on the subject of exclusion and marginalization within the accounting profession and is the joint editor of the book Accountancy and Empire: The Legacy of British Professional Organisation (Routledge).