Source: The Conversation – Africa
For the past few decades, universities, employers and professional bodies globally have invested in mentoring programmes, scholarships and student support initiatives to diversify careers such as professional accounting. The assumption has been that if talented students have help to overcome barriers, representation will improve.
For many socioeconomically marginalised people, going to university is seen as the key to a better life. Accounting has been one of the professions that promises stable jobs, financial security and upward social mobility. But while more students are getting through the university gates, building a successful career in accounting has proved much harder than simply earning a degree.
The most recent World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report (2025), which has tracked gender disparities since 2006, reports that, at the current rate of progress, full gender parity remains an estimated 123 years away. The gap is clear when you compare educational attainment with career progression. Although women now outperform men in tertiary education globally, they account for only 29.5% of senior managers with tertiary qualifications. Similarly, women’s representation in top management increased only modestly, from 25.7% in 2015 to 28.1% in 2024. The pace of progress has slowed since 2022.
In South Africa, too, where I am based as an accounting professor, changing gender and racial representation in the profession has been slower than expected.
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To understand why, researcher Joanne Sopt and I reviewed 81 studies examining how minority students globally have been supported over decades, from university entry to professional accounting practice.
We found that early initiatives focused on helping students overcome what were seen as individual shortcomings. The solutions offered were tutoring, scholarships and mentoring. While these programmes remain important, they assumed that the main challenge was preparing students to fit into existing institutions.
More recent research we reviewed tells a different story. It shows that success is shaped just as much by the environments students enter as by their own ability. Across countries, the evidence shows that meaningful support goes beyond financial assistance. It includes visible role models, culturally responsive teaching, strong mentoring relationships and institutions that recognise the diverse experiences students bring with them.
It’s also clear from the research that solutions should fit each context (local histories, identities and institutional realities).
Our findings have implications far beyond accounting. It is the responsibility of universities, employers and professional bodies to create environments where everyone has an equal chance to thrive.
The next phase of transformation must be to make changes to institutions to fit the people they were created to serve.
Framing inequality
Our literature review included 81 peer-reviewed accounting research articles. They investigated diversity and marginalisation in accounting education and in the profession worldwide.
The research showed a shift in how scholars understand inequality.
In the early 1990s they tended to frame under-representation as an individual problem. If students struggled to succeed, the response was to provide more support. Tutoring, mentoring and financial assistance programmes were designed to help them catch up.
These initiatives assumed that the main barriers lay within students themselves.
From around the 2020s, however, researchers began asking a different question. They asked why capable students continued to experience obstacles even after receiving support and why even some qualified professionals did too.
This moved attention away from perceived individual deficits towards the environments in which people were expected to learn and work. The question was how inclusive these environments were.
Persisting patterns
Across continents, countries and demographic groups, the same patterns emerged. Students were attracted to accounting because it promised good jobs. Yet many reported feeling that they did not belong. They encountered language barriers, limited access to professional networks, few role models who shared their backgrounds, and institutional cultures that assumed everyone entered university or the workplace with similar experiences and resources.
Some interventions proved remarkably effective. Joining professional associations strengthened students’ sense of belonging. Small changes, such as using cream-coloured rather than white examination paper for students with dyslexia, improved accessibility. Inclusive language in recruitment material influenced whether women and LGBTQ+ applicants perceived accounting as a profession where they belonged. Mentoring, culturally responsive teaching and meaningful role models all made a positive difference.
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Perhaps the most striking finding from our review was that many of the barriers that professionals encountered had little to do with their technical skills and knowledge. Instead, they related to organisational culture, informal expectations, psychological safety and the pressure to conform to dominant professional norms.
Many professionals described feeling they had to continually prove their competence, adapt their language or behaviour, or hide aspects of their identity in order to succeed. These are not problems that can be solved by another scholarship or mentoring programme alone.
Culture and belonging
Around the world, organisations of various kinds are asking why decades of diversity initiatives have not produced the transformation they hoped for.
Our findings suggest that mentoring, scholarships and student support should continue to form part of the broader strategy of restructuring institutional culture, recruitment practices, promotion systems, curriculum design and the everyday experiences of belonging within organisations.
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Success should no longer be measured only by how many people from historically disadvantaged groups enter a profession. It’s also about whether those professions have changed sufficiently for diverse talent to flourish.
Mentoring and scholarships open doors. But lasting change depends on what people encounter once they walk through them.
Sedzani Musundwa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/08/19/why-isnt-the-accounting-profession-more-diverse-research-points-to-the-real-levers-of-change/