IMA® (Institute of Management Accountants) hosted the third edition of its Women’s Accounting Leadership Series for accounting and finance professionals in the Middle East and India in Bengaluru on April 17, 2019. The conference was supported by Amazon and The University of Manchester. The series aimed at encouraging women professionals in finance and accounting to break the “glass ceiling” in business leadership.
The Series brought together female professionals in finance and accounting to discuss the challenges and issues in their careers to reach decision-making roles within their organisations. Top Indian women in the business and finance sector participated in the conference to share their experience and insights on accounting leadership.
IMA is one of the largest and most respected associations focused exclusively on advancing the management accounting profession. Globally, IMA supports the profession through research, the CMA (Certified Management Accountant) program, continuing education, networking and advocacy of the highest ethical business practices. IMA has a global network of more than 100,000 members in 140 countries and 300 professional and student chapters.
Ginger White is the IMA Chair for 2018-2019 and is only the fifth woman to hold IMA’s most senior volunteer role in its 100-year history. She spoke to TNM about various aspects including the challenges confronting women today, benefits of gender diversity at the workplace, how automation will impact finance.
Here are excerpts.
What do you think are the challenges that exist for women today?
When I think about it, education breaks down those barriers or challenges and the other thing is confidence. Helping one another become confident because we have such amazing skills as women that really bring people together. We have that nurturing skill just naturally and so we can help develop the future generation of leaders. It’s interesting as I sit here in the Women’s Accounting Leadership Series in Bengaluru, the same challenges exist no matter where you are in the world for women. So we’ve led a lot of these in the US for the last few years and the themes are common and we like to talk to those women who have broken the glass ceiling. And also being open about how we can help other women, promote themselves basically together collectively.
Benefits of gender diversity at the workplace
It’s been known by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) that companies perform better when they have women leaders in the C-Suite (CEO, CFO, COO etc.) and there are some statistics which say that if there’s only one woman in the C-suite and that one woman is in HR, companies don’t perform well. So there’s metrics around that which suggest that when you have women leaders at the top, it definitely improves performance.
What are the hurdles for women to rise to leadership positions?
Some of the biggest hurdles could be ourselves quite honestly, because I think sometimes as women, we are most critical of ourselves. So, some of things that help build confidence is education. The more education you can get, it helps in taking on leadership roles. Women are mostly risk-averse though we are getting there. So just changing our mindset is a big, critical success factor.
What can companies do to help women who want to start a family?
Companies have realised that it’s a challenge for women to get to the C-Suite and to actually maintain that skill set required. So when I think of women starting families, the husband needs to also share what may have commonly been known as women duties in the home. So, in the US that’s becoming much more the case. I don’t know about cultures here if they have shifted yet. Secondly, a lot of companies have allowed women to just work part-time. Another thing some companies have done is they have also given paternity leave. So in the past, it was 2 weeks but they are extending that. It kind of helps level the playing field and remove that perceived differentiation.
Do you see a gradual transformation in the number of women in leadership roles?
Absolutely, I have seen that. When I think of GM (General Motors), Mary Barra, she is the CEO and is the first woman CEO of a top automotive company. The company’s CFO is also a female. It’s changing and I think as women, we owe it to them and they are amazing women and they are good role models that we want to emulate.
How will automation and AI impact accounting and finance?
That is one of our big things that we manage every day at the Institute of Management Accountants. We are embracing that change. We see it as a lot of the jobs that are being done today will go away and that’s one of our big initiatives within the IMA is that we want to prepare our members to pivot with that change. So we have a lot of data analytics. We are trying to make sure that our members that are currently in the workforce are making that change; educating them; making them capable so that when their old positions get eliminated, they have a place to go. We have a certification for our CMA (Certified Management Accountants). We have something called the CSCA i.e. Certified Strategy and Competitive Analysis), that’s really more around the mid-level where individuals could pivot into strategy. Thinking of how to help our members manage that lifecycle transformative change in a very nice way, not in a fearful way. So really making our members embrace the change because it’s coming. It’s really exciting times in the management accounting profession.