Gender essentialism and occupational segregation in insolvency practice

Abstract

Advances towards egalitarianism in professional recruitment may be offset by processes of occupational re-segregation. Drawing on gender theory this paper investigates horizontal segregation in the UK insolvency profession, as revealed through the lived experiences of female and male practitioners. It is shown that horizontal segregation pervades at different levels of practice and is undergirded by various elements of gender essentialism. Physical essentialism explains why insolvency practice has been traditionally gendered male. Interactional essentialism combines with the management of work-life balance to define the subfields of corporate and personal insolvency as masculine and feminine respectively. Gender essentialist assumptions also pervade the distribution of roles and the allocation of work tasks. Networks are identified as arenas for the reproduction and perpetuation of occupational segregation. The findings indicate the continuing potency of gender in everyday professional life, and suggest the limitations of diversity-orientated policies and the complexities of formulating transformative agendas.

Status does not predict stress: Women in an egalitarian hunter–gatherer society

“…Even in workplaces where both sexes are present, ‘homosociality’, or the tendency to hire and socialize with only one's own sex, is fairly common (Elliott & Smith, 2004; Joyce & Walker, 2015; Schilt & Wiswall, 2008). This is true even in relatively egalitarian contexts.…”

Do Mother and Father Auditors Have Equal Prospects for Career Advancement?

“…These statistics suggest that the audit firms in our study have vertical occupational and horizontal occupational segregation. Joyce and Walker () conducted a qualitative study examining gender and occupational segregation in insolvency in the UK using gender essentialism, a theory that explains sex‐typing of occupations and persistent occupational ghettos. They describe vertical occupational segregation as the stratification of rank and status (or the glass ceiling in the case of women), and horizontal segregation relates to the way in which women dominate occupations, jobs and roles in particular industries.…”

“…The evidence suggests that male auditors enjoy the positive extension from parenting to work, whereas women are negatively affected in their auditing careers by their parental role (Kirchmeyer, ). Although large audit firms advance egalitarianism in recruitment, male‐dominated networks, biased promotion processes and the game playing necessary to get on (Anderson‐Gough et al ., ; Mueller et al ., ) are undermining the equal treatment of mothers (Joyce & Walker, ).…”

Women’s skills and career advancement: a review of gender (in)equality in an accounting workplace

“…Women are subordinate at accounting firms, which weakens their career progress (Barker & Monks, 1998;Ciancanelli, Gallhofer, Humphrey, & Kirkham, 1990;Haynes, 2016;Lehman, 1992). Previous studies identified horizontal and vertical segregation (Joyce & Walker, 2015), motherhood (Dambrin & Lambert, 2008;Windsor & Auyeung, 2006), social and religious constructs about women (Haq, 2013), accounting technologies (Carmona & Ezzamel, 2016), and career patterns (Fearfull & Kamenou, 2006) that hinder a woman's climb to higher organizational echelons. Haynes (2016) suggested that future research could deal with social capital, cultural capital, embodiment, religion, family structure, and their intersections at accounting workplaces in the Asian context.…”