CPA Ireland celebrates becoming first accountancy body to achieve gender parity, but says gender gap across the accounting profession remains too high.
The President of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Ireland has called for renewed efforts across the accountancy profession in Ireland to achieve gender parity. Cormac Mohan made the call as CPA Ireland becomes the first Irish accountancy body to achieve a 50:50 ratio among its members.
Speaking at the 2018 conferring of new CPA accountants, 58% of whom were female, Cormac Mohan, President of CPA Ireland said; “CPA Ireland has reached gender parity and we believe that across the profession there is a shared responsibility to encourage diversity. Closing the gender gap within five years is realistic and should be an industry wide goal".
“Today there are 5,000 more men in Ireland working in accountancy than there are women, this represents a gender gap of 14%. There has been considerable improvement over the past decade, in 2007 just a third of accountants were female, but the pace of change has not been nearly fast enough. In any modern business or workplace gender diversity is essential. Countless studies have shown that it is beneficial to both business performance and employee morale”.
We have to make the profession an attractive career path to new entrants and increase the access routes into the profession. At CPA Ireland we have taken big steps in this regard over the past year, including the introduction of CPA FastTrack. This programme introduced in twelve third level institutes nationwide, credits students for work experience obtained as part of their degree qualification as part of their professional training requirement. This reduces the time it takes to qualify as an accountant by a full year and allows newly qualified CPAs to begin practicing as accountants more quickly.”
Cormac Mohan, CPA Ireland President concluded by congratulating this year’s new CPA Members “I am delighted to welcome my new CPA colleagues to the profession and welcome the fact that once again newly qualified CPAs are benefiting from a 100% employment rate. I congratulate each of them for their dedication ,commitment and achievement to date.”
Pictured left to right, Liam Lucey, Emma Flanagan, Cormac Mohan, President of CPA Ireland, Geraldine Leahy, Sunil Appat Sukumaran and Ciarsha Moore at the annual CPA Ireland conferring ceremony, Croagh Park, Dublin.