More women becoming partners and principals at firms

How can a pandemic that has been so bad for millions of working women nationally be so good for women at accounting and advisory firms?

When the Accounting and Financial Women’s Alliance releases the 2021 edition of its annual Accounting MOVE Project at the opening of its annual conference on Oct. 18, it has a stunning piece of good news for the profession: Women have achieved the milestone of 32% of partners and principals, in aggregate, for the 41 firms that participated this year in the research.

Just shy of one-third of women partners and principals represents a big step from the 29% women partners and principals reported in the 2020 Accounting MOVE Project. These firms are accelerating toward gender equity. They have rounded the curve on incremental progress and are gaining momentum.

Among them: The Bonadio Group, now with 39% women partners and principals, up from 32% in 2020; Clark Nuber, now with 56%, up from 49%; Novogradac, now with 34%, up from 30%; Abbott, Stringham, and Lynch, now 46% from 43%.

While the mix of firms participating in the MOVE Project changes a bit every year (due in no small part to mergers and acquisitions), the trend line is irrefutable. Firms that play the long game, continually identifying and dismantling cultural and functional barriers to women’s advancement, are closing the gender gap long lamented in the profession.

Specifically, Accounting MOVE Project firms that laid the groundwork for remote career paths were perfectly positioned to ride the wave of pandemic growth. Firms that had resisted remote work — even though it is a proven way to retain mid-career working parents, especially mothers — had to scramble to get their remote work groove. Meanwhile, firms with smoothly operating remote teams, business development and synchronized online training had only to switch among existing gears to capture new clients and revenue in the pandemic economy.

Among them: Rehmann, now with 37% women partners and principals, up from 31% in 2020; Johansan & Yau, now 50%, up from 43%; and James Moore, now 58%, up from 43%.

Women’s traditional leadership strengths were precisely the capabilities that are pulling firms through this roller-coaster pandemic economy. Collaboration, communication and consensus are the soft skills that deliver hard results. At these firms, women accustomed to working remotely took the lead in converting business development outreach from onsite to online. Women quickly taught others how to design and lead virtual events that reached their rattled clients immediately, with both reassurance and new services. Women quickly collaborated across internal practices to link previously unrelated expertise to create new suites of services to keep clients fiscally grounded.

The Accounting MOVE Project cohort is pulling the entire profession into the lead, showing clients how they too can retain and advance women through extraordinarily unpredictable circumstances. (By way of contrast, women comprise 27% of corporate senior vice presidents, according to McKinsey’s 2021 Women in the Workplace report.)

Collectively, the Accounting MOVE Project firms illustrate how a critical milestone for women also breaks ground for other historically under-represented groups. When women comprise a third of a group, the dynamics change, according to sociologists. When they are at least a third, women — or any minority within the group — are perceived as speaking from their own strengths, rather than representing their identity group.