Ed. note: delirious from a cross-country move this past week, AG mistakenly switched around percentages. This has been corrected and she will be meditating on the matter hoping for forgiveness.
A recent Mergis Group survey reveals 47 percent of women in accounting are less than content with compensation and the always popular with the ladies work-life balance, leaving us scratching our heads wondering who these 47 percent are (we already know plenty of the 53%). If any of you are in that group or know someone who is, please get in touch, we’re desperate to connect with a woman in accounting who actually feels appropriately compensated for her work and redeemed by the challenges of her career while rewarded with a perfect balance of work and family. Seriously. Anybody?
Anyway, the details from the survey if you are still interested:
Women are less satisfied with the progression of their accounting and finance careers than men. Specifically, 60 percent of male workers in accounting and finance consider themselves to be satisfied, as opposed to 47 percent of women.
Women in accounting and finance ranked being challenged (31 percent), compensation (25 percent) and flexibility (15 percent) as the most important factors to satisfaction in their career.
On the other hand, men in accounting and finance ranked compensation (32 percent), being challenged 26 percent) and flexibility (15 percent) as the most important factors to satisfaction in their career.
Mergis breaks down these results further, pointing out that women in accounting and finance are more than generally upset with the challenges and opportunities offered to them. Hey, they don’t say “it’s a man’s world” for nothing.
“Based on the findings of our Women in Finance survey, more than half of the women surveyed are dissatisfied with the progression of their careers and nearly three-quarters believe they face a separate set of professional challenges in comparison to their male counterparts,” stated Patricia Dinunzio, regional managing director of The Mergis Group. “While there are certainly many different viewpoints in how workers in general define career satisfaction and success , it is interesting to note that both men and women are highly likely to recommend the profession to others. One of the greatest take-aways from this survey is that there is a clear need for mentorship programs within the profession. It is our personal and professional responsibility to enable existing and future accounting and finance professionals to achieve their full career potential. Doing so will only contribute to the future development of the profession.”
My 2¢? The profession – and your career – is what you make of it. Mentors don’t just come along and decide to kick down their knowledge, you’ve got to get out there and find one. We don’t need the AICPA to set up play dates with young CPAs and OGs of the industry in order to accomplish this; instead need to take matters into our own hands if we are upset with how things are working out at the moment. In other words, get off your lazy ass and stop expecting everything to be handed to you, go out and get it if you don’t think you have enough of it.
The disparity is greater between generations than the sexes if you ask me but who is asking me?
Full survey results and methodology may be found here. As always, you are welcome to submit your opinion on surveyed subjects in the comments.
Can a few Enron-sized failures happen already? I can’t be the only one thinking this is the most likely candidate to make change in this bottom-of-the-barrel industry.
Accounting doesn’t need to be cool. It needs to be lucrative. People like money. Money is cool. Money lets you buy cool stuff and do cool things.
This ain’t rocket science.
The only issue is that it is in Big4 Partners’ best interest that salaries stay low.
So until that changes It’s hard to convince the next generation to take a raw deal when they have a choice in the matter.
At large law firms, it is in the partners’ best interest that salaries stay low. And yet their staff make a lot more money than staff at large accounting firms…
I disagree. Firms offer 5, 10 even 15k referral bonuses and people don’t act on it. They offer 10 or 20k more to stay vs. go – and people still leave. They offer the opportunity to make partner and make hundreds of thousands a year – younger people don’t care.
Perhaps, the key point should not be about how exciting accounting could be. There are a plethora of professional fields out there that I could not imagine being “exciting.” Take proctology or podiatry for instance. Yet, we never hear about a shortage of them. There are other factors that make the field worth looking at as a possible vocation.
Urologists make a LOT of money. Go figure!
Granted I only spent 30 seconds Googling this but…
“An entry-level Urologist with under 1 year experience makes about $403,681. With less than 2 years of experience, a mid-level Urologist makes around $407,560.” 😲
Yeah, but you have to get up close and personal with dudes’ dicks all day. As an accountant, we still deal with dicks all day, but at least they are fully dressed.
Aren’t 1st year urologists like 34 years old? Plus they have 8 years of student loans. That a lot of $$, but . . .