From Women's Liberation to Feminism: Reflections in Accounting Academia

This paper argues that women from different economic, social and geographical background have to confront a myriad of problems. For the majority of women these problems are class based. While it is undeniably the case that the women's movement has made significant gains, they have largely favoured middle and upper class white women. In this sense women's liberation, as a liberation movement has been largely incorporated within society and the state. Much contemporary feminism has taken up residence in universities and is concerned with theories rather than issues. Despite the incorporation of “feminism” into the status quo, there has been a backlash against women and feminism in the form of neo‐Darwinist Evolutionary Psychology. This paper considers some of the debates surrounding Evolutionary Psychology and how they apply to mainstream accounting. The paper also considers contemporary gender writing in accounting relating it back to the stand taken in the paper that bourgeois feminism has made the best recent political, economic and social gains. These might turn out to be at the expense of the majority of women.