Today is International Women’s Day and as always like I to salute the women who have lead the way in accounting academia.

There is no reason, especially in the USA with their finance envy, that the accounting professoriate could not have ended up as male dominated as the finance professoriate.

One of the big reasons for that is a personal hero of mine, Katherine Schipper. When she became co-editor of JAR in the early ’80’s she was a visible symbol and an effective force for the argument women could make it in a then male dominated profession. When Dr. Schipper became JAR co-editor, even in a progressive country like Canada, it was rare to find a women tenured professor in accounting. Indeed, my current university did not hire its first female accounting faculty member until that time!

While not every social and behavioural researcher holds Dr. Schipper in the high regard that I do (mostly due to myths that do not stand up to close scrutiny), as a accounting group we can celebrate the relative diversity of accounting academics over finance in the business school world due to women like Dr. Schipper who just got on with doing the job!

And that’s how I see it!