“Helping them to forget..”: the organizational embedding of gender relations in public audit firms

As Giddens has observed “Nothing is clearer than that gender is a matter of learning and continuous work, rather than a simple extension of biologically given sexual difference” (1991, p. 63). In this paper, we discuss the processes of professional socialization implicated in the reproduction of gender relationships in UK offices of two multi-national audit firms. The gendering of audit firms is viewed as connected not simply to important elements of the formal organizational structures, such as temporal organization and appraisal processes, but also to the tacit, informal components, such as the correct form of socializing involved in `getting in and getting on' [Sociology 28 (2) (1994) 479] within Big Five audit firms. Our focus is upon practices, including the discursive practices trainees pick up and mobilize during their everyday interactions. In our conclusion, we signal how informal and formal organizational processes are intertwined so as to reproduce gender domination, and comment upon the problems that policy initiatives and reforms face in attempting to redress organizational gender imbalances.