Accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace

Research addressing how gendered space is experienced in the workplace, how accounting operates as a gendered and gendering technology and how it impacts identity formation and gender performance is sparse. This paper examines the relationship between accounting and lived experience in the gendered workplace. We articulate a theoretical framing that examines gender producing processes and how accounting functions as a gendering gaze at work. We then offer an overview of some key studies that have examined accounting and gender in the workplace. We argue that the construction of gendered identity in the workplace is about how individuals perform gender in an imaginatively produced space for the purposes of control and domination. We identify three main themes that deserve the attention of future researchers: a) how the human gaze produces gender divisions at work; b) how accounting functions as a gaze and produces gender divisions in the workplace while noting the scope for resistance; and c) how gendered accounting technologies reaffirm existing gender divisions.