Gender Bias in UK Big Four Accounting Firms
- Di Zhang
- Jun 30, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: Oct 3, 2022
While writing my Master's dissertation in Accounting and Finance at the University of Manchester, I chose to discuss the relationship between accounting professionalism and gender bias. From reading research works and reports, I developed an intense interest in gender equality area. This led me to explore how gender bias has been generated in UK Big Four Accounting Firms and what progress they have made to promote gender equality in workplaces.
Gender bias in general refers to the fact that one gender is favoured over others. In UK accounting firms, gender bias has been observed from the last century, where men have been more favoured than women in many ways, mostly salary and career promotions.
Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Ernst & Young (EY) and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (Deloitte), known as the Big Four Accounting Firms, are the four most influential pioneers among public accounting firms across UK. This resource is to briefly introduce the current gender bias issue in the UK Big Four, from Gender Pay Gap to Career Promotions, and how this issue has been affected by the pandemic.
You can click the buttons below and visit the UK Big Four's websites
Differences in Salaries: Gender Pay Gap
Gender Pay Gap measures the difference in pay between men and women, explained through statistics. It can be affected by a variety of factors like workforce distribution.
The below table shows from the past two years the four companies’ mean gender pay gap, which calculates the difference in average hourly pay for women compared to men.
Mean Basic Salaries Pay Gap among employees (pay gap in pence/1 pound * 100%)
From the above table, we can see that except for KPMG, the other three companies all presented with a decrease in Mean Basic Salaries Pay Gap. According to KPMG's Pay Gap Report 2021, this increase was largely driven by external hires, where more women at junior grades and more men at senior grades were recruited in historically male-dominated sectors, such as technology and deal advisory.
"Our data – taken for the period between April 2020 and April 2021 – shows that the increase in the gender pay gap has largely been driven by our external hires, where we have recruited more women at junior grades and more men at senior grades. At the senior grades this was largely to fill specific roles in historically male-dominated sectors such as technology and deal advisory during the months of the pandemic, which this reporting period covers."
--Jon Holt / Chief Executive, KPMG in the UK
Career Promotions
Glass Ceiling refers to the fact that women experience more barriers and difficulties to their progession than men in organisations and companies. This can marginise women from high levels of management regardless of their achievements and qualifications.
Women are also experiencing Glass Ceiling in their career paths in the UK Big Four, where the working culture requires and values long working hours and high levels of commitment to clients. Therefore, especially women with current or potential family caring responsibilities (such as maternity) find it more difficult to be promoted to leadership positions such as directors, partners and senior managers.
The table below gathers statistics on the proportion of partners that are female in the UK Big Four, from 2020 to 2021, all of which are below 26%.
Proportion of female partners
Pandemic’s effects on gender bias situation
Global Covid-19 pandemic has cast a spotlight on ‘she-cession’ , referring to the observation that women have been at a higher chance of sacrificing their careers, in face of higher demands of childcare, home-schooling and household responsibilities.
According to Financial Times, while schools and child centres were closed in UK, on average women spent 5 hours daily on home schooling primary-school age children, 3 hours more than men.
A report from Institue for Fiscal Studies in UK found that of parents who were in paid work prior to the lockdown, mothers are 1.5 times more likely than fathers to have either lost their job or quit since the lockdown began.
UK Big Four’s actions
While gender bias issues are exaggerated during the pandemic, the UK Big Four have been taking positive actions to mitigate the disproportionate impacts on women.
EY
An EY and Peterson Institute of International Economics study ‘Is Gender Diversity Profitable? Evidence from a Global Survey’ revealed that in the countries where women take up the highest proportions in leadership positions, fathers are offered 11 times more paternity leave days than in the countries at bottom (more details in the below table). EY then introduced policies with equal maternity and paternity leave, recognising both parents’ duties to care for new-borns, home-school and support elderly relatives.
Further Readings
KPMG
KPMG has established Return to Work programme, offering training and mentoring to support women with a career break of 18+ months to transition back to a career in Audit or Tax & Legal.
PwC
PwC has issued PwC’s Women in Work Index, reflecting on ‘the very real impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on women’s lives, jobs, economic prosperity, and broader wellbeing; and importantly, to look towards the future’. In the latest report from year 2022, PwC stressed the importance of offering accessible and gender-equal flexible working options and minimising gender biases against the employees who work flexibly.
In 2015, PwC set five-year targets on gender data to measure the success of their Five-Point Action Plan towards promoting a more inclusive and equal working environment. They updated their targets in 2021 to ensure they continue to drive change.
The below statistics show the proportion of women in different grades.
Grade | 2021 Gender Data | 2025 Gender Targets |
Partner | 23% | 30% |
Director | 37% | 43% |
Senior Manager | 46% | 50% |
Manager | 50% | 50% |
Senior Associate | 45% | 49% |
Associate | 45% | 50% |
PwC's Five-Point Action Plan
Inclusive Culture
Inclusive leadership programmes are being conducted to help leaders at all levels create a culture where difference is embraced
Senior Level Accountability
Ensuring senior level accountability for delivering on gender targets, aligning their accountability framework to both performance management and reward.
Fair Work Allocation
Working on high-profile projects is one way that our people can really make their mark and progress in their career.
Recruitment Activity
Ensuring recruitment processes from student hires to experienced hires are open and attractive to all.
Progression Coaches
Investing to create more progression coaches to provide career sponsorship and advice to high potential female and ethnic minority directors.
Deloitte
Deloitte has promoted its Gender Balance Network to welcome and encourage more female graduates, trainees and new recruits to join its firm and devote their talents, regardless of their gender and identity.
Q&A-- with two colleagues from PwC and EY, China offices
Before pursuing my Master's degree in Manchester, I obtained a Bachelor's degree in International Accounting and had working experiences in accounting industry in China. To gain more insights on gender bias issue in global accounting firms, I've sent below questions to two former colleagues with current and past Big Four working experiences. By contrasting their answers to each question, you can see the differences of perspectives and opinions from a male and female employee.
Please be aware that the answers are subjective, only based on personal experiences and opinions.
Question 1: Which accounting firm are you working for / did you work for?
Male (M): PwC, Beijing office
Female (F): EY, Shanghai Office
Question 2: Have you noticed or experienced any gender bias at your workplace?
M: I didn’t sense any obvious gender bias while working in the office. My colleagues have a rather close relationship with each other, since they are working together towards completing a certain task or project.
F: The salaries are equal for male and female employees. While I did sense a little difference between male and female candidates in the application and interview process. Among my friends from the same university, the same major and even similar campus experiences, two of my male friends got the interview opportunities while my female friend didn’t (she even passed several ACCA exams, which is an obvious advantage). Honestly, none of them had any internship experience before, so they may not be competent enough to get the internship, I suppose female candidates have to meet higher standards to get the same opportunity as males. In the interview process, I also noticed that one male candidate barely expressed any opinion in the Non-Leader Group Discussion, but he was interviewed a little longer than all of the rest candidates in the manager interview. He got the internship eventually. Probably he had an excellent personal resume and obtained professional qualifications, so it may be unfair to say that inequality happened at this situation.
Question 3: Have you heard of female employees/managers talking about family/childcare at your workplace?
M: The firm I am working at carries out maternity sessions, helping female employees with caring responsibilities network and communicate with each other. The senior manager from the previous project I was in would take her little child to meet clients. There are also well-furnished lactation rooms available at work.
F: I’ve heard from one of my female teachers that she chose to change her job from an accountant of a large accounting firm to an ACCA teacher, so she could work from home when her baby was born. It may be a personal choice that she wanted to involve more in her child’s growth, but this choice did change her career path completely. A female teacher at my university also decide to work as a lecturer because of child care responsibilities. She returned to her previous job as an account last year when her child grew up a little.
Question 4: Have you noticed any inequality among senior level and above?
M: Personally, I haven’t. But work in accounting firms, especially the Big Four, is quite demanding. Female employees and managers may choose to go back to their families after 5-10 years. F: There is an interesting phenomenon in the Big Four Accounting Firms that female associates are more than male associates and male partners are more than female partners. I heard promotion quota is becoming tighter these years. Maybe male employees in general have a greater possibility to get a promotion because their physical quality enables them to stay longer in the stressful occupation which requires a lot of overtime working.
Question 5: Has the accounting firm you worked at/are working at explicated a clear regulation, or worked on creating a firm culture to achieve gender equality?
M: I think managers value the candidates who are more outstanding and competent, but I’m not sure if this is related to gender.
F: EY is famous for being “women friendly”, the proportion of female partners of which is the highest among the four big accounting firms. That’s the reason why EY would be my priority option when I choose my job offers.
From the above answers, we can see the male and female employee in China Big Four provided different perceptions on their working experiences. The male employee considered his working environment gender-friendly and no bias. The female employee sensed unfairness in application and interview process, where she formed a perspective that 'female candidates have to meet higher standards to get the same opportunity as males.' From her workplaces and communications with teachers, she also observed that women are more likely to give up or take a break from their careers in face of child birth and caring responsibilities, while men are more likely to get career promotions because of their stronger physical qualities under pressure and over-time working.
Summary
Gender Bias is a general and widely discussed topic across many industries, occupations and countries. Gender Pay Gap and Class Ceiling are the two most iconic and long-existing perspectives on the unfairness and inequality that female employees have been experiencing. The statistics and interview contents in this article present us with accurate and realistic views into this issue. To achieve a gender equal world for every working woman and every girl in the next generation, it is our responsibility, no matter of our gender, to raise awareness, to call out unfairness, to stand for ourselves, to change.
"In the future there will be no female leaders. There will be just leaders. We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change."
--Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead
Further Resources
--Fighting Gender Bias in the Workplace, simpleshow foundation
--How to design gender bias out of your workplace | Sara Sanford, TED
--International Women's Day with Gina Rippon, author of The Gendered Brain; Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester
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