During one of our recent webinars, we were joined by Julia Penny, Immediate Past President of ICAEW. Julia was ICAEW's fourth female president and is passionate about achieving greater diversity of talent within chartered accountancy and making the profession more inclusive.
It's fair to say that we still have some way to go, to close the gender gap, but we thought we would have a look back to over 100 years ago in the world of accounting, to see how women were represented in the profession at this time, which will hopefully show us that progress has been made. In the early 1900s it wasn't even considered that a woman could become an ICAEW member, let alone president. In fact, it was only in 1920 that women were first accepted as ICAEW members. Mary Harris Smith became the first female ICAEW member when she joined in May of that year.
Mary Harris Smith: The First Female ICAEW Member
Born in 1847, Mary Harris Smith left school at 16. At that time, she could not go to university, but her father arranged for her to have classes in maths with tutors at Kings. She started her own accountancy practice in 1888 and applied to join the Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors, at the time the preeminent professional association of accountants in England. They rejected her on the grounds of her sex. She applied again but suffered the same fate. Eventually, largely due to her persistence, they relented and admitted her as an Honorary Fellow.
In 1918, she became the first woman to pass ICAEW's professional qualification, but they would still not admit her to membership, despite her by then 30 years of experience in practice. 1919 saw the passing of the new Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, and it became illegal for professional bodies to discriminate on the grounds of sex. Mary Harris Smith became the first female chartered accountant at the age of 72.
Something to celebrate certainly, even if it is a story of compliance with the new legislation rather than a triumph of progressive thinking. And how does it compare to other professional bodies. ACCA claim Ethel Ayres Purdie, as the first woman admitted to an accountancy professional body ten years earlier, in 1909. North of the border, it wasn't until 1923 that Isabel Guthrie became the first woman admitted to ICAS.
Christine Ross: The First Female CPA in the US
Our friends in the US got their act together altogether earlier. Born in Nova Scotia in 1873, Christine Ross took New York's inaugural CPA exam in 1896. She achieved a score that placed her in the top two or three of her cohort and became the first female CPA in the USA in December 1899 -- after a lengthy delay in releasing her result, apparently caused by concerns over her gender.
Progress Made, but More Work to Be Done
With women now making up 44% of full-time accountants in the UK, we have come a long way, but as we have reported elsewhere on this blog, there is still a long way to go. So let's not forget that none of these advances came easily. The fight for equality continues.
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