What does it mean to be a woman accountant in China today? And how has that meaning changed across generations?
These are the questions that drove our new paper, Generational Shifts and Changing Identities of Chinese Women Accountants Outside Public Accounting, published in The Accounting Review.
While much of the research on gender and the accounting profession has focused on Western contexts and big professional service firms, the vast majority of Chinese accountants actually work outside public practice. They are employed in state-owned enterprises, private companies, banks, and government organisations. Importantly, the profession in China is strongly feminised: women make up the majority of accountants, and accounting has traditionally been seen as a ‘suitable’ career for women because of its associations with patience, diligence, cautiousness, and stability. Despite this dominance, women’s voices and experiences remain largely absent from the literature. Our study set out to change that by listening closely to how women accountants themselves understand and construct their professional identities across different generations.
Why generations matter
Women’s participation in accounting in China is deeply entwined with the country’s turbulent modern history. From socialist state feminism and the Maoist ideal of the ‘Iron Woman’, to the one-child policy and the rise of social media and consumerism, different historical periods have shaped expectations of what it means to be both a woman and a worker in China.
Generational theory offers a useful way to capture these shifts. Each generation lives through distinct political, social, and cultural events in their formative years, and their experiences influence their values and behaviours, and by extension, their professional identities.
So, we asked:
How do generational shifts and gender-specific historical events intersect to shape the identities of Chinese women accountants outside public accounting?
Listening to women’s stories
To explore this question, we carried out 30 in-depth interviews with women accountants across four generational groups – the post-60s, post-70s, post-80s, and post-90s (That’s right, in China, generations are labelled by birth decade rather than by cultural markers like Baby Boomers or Gen Z.). These conversations revealed not only individual career journeys but also powerful collective patterns about how different generations construct their identities at work.
What we found
Older generations (the post-60s and post-70s): rule-followers and hard workers
Women who entered the profession during or soon after the socialist era often spoke of accounting as a stable, low-risk career – one that was considered particularly suitable for women. Their career paths were strongly shaped by state policies and labour allocation systems, leaving little room for personal choice.
Many embraced identities as ‘hard workers’ or even ‘Iron Women’, showing devotion to their jobs and families. They tended to accept hierarchy and seniority rules in the workplace, seeing them as natural extensions of broader Confucian values of respect for age and authority. Gender issues, when raised, were often downplayed or treated as something to adapt to rather than resist.
Younger generations (the post-80s and post-90s): rule-breakers and rights defenders
By contrast, younger women – growing up under the one-child policy, with greater access to education, exposure to global ideas, and the rise of digital media – construct their professional identities very differently.
They are more willing to question and resist traditional gender norms. Many described seniority rules as ‘redundant and bureaucratic’, and instead emphasised fairness, merit, and autonomy, using their professional role as accountants to challenge these norms. Unlike older generations, they do not see long hours as a badge of honour. Instead, they actively defend their rights to overtime pay, value work-life balance, and seek fulfilment outside the workplace.
Why these matter
These generational contrasts reveal that professional identity in accounting is not fixed. Rather, it shifts with broader historical, social, and cultural changes. For women accountants in China, identity is constantly negotiated between tradition and modernity, between state authority and personal autonomy, and between professional expectations and family responsibilities.
Our findings make two main contributions:
- Bringing generations into gender and accounting research
By showing how younger and older women accountants construct different identities, we highlight the importance of generational shifts in shaping the profession. Understanding these changes is crucial for anticipating how accounting will continue to evolve.
- Expanding beyond Western-centric narratives
Most research on women in accounting has focused on Western contexts and the Big 4 firms. By studying Chinese women outside public accounting, we provide a richer, more inclusive perspective that challenges the ‘malestream’ view of the profession.
Looking ahead
The stories of Chinese women accountants remind us that the profession is not a monolith. It is lived and experienced differently across contexts, cultures, and generations. As younger generations enter the workplace with new values and expectations, they are reshaping what it means to be a professional accountant.
For the accounting profession in China and beyond, this raises important questions:
- How will the push for work-life balance reshape workplace cultures long dominated by long-hours norms?
- How might younger generations’ resistance to hierarchy affect how authority and expertise are understood?
- And how can the profession better accommodate diverse identities, rather than expecting women to fit into pre-existing moulds?
Our study does not claim to provide the final word on these questions. Instead, it offers a glimpse into how women accountants in China navigate their professional lives in the face of shifting gender norms and generational change. By listening to their voices, we hope to open up new ways of thinking about accounting – not just as a technical practice, but as a deeply social and cultural one.
You can read the full paper here: https://researchportal.hw.ac.uk/en/publications/generational-shifts-and-changing-identities-of-chinese-women-acco
Qi Li, Accountancy