CHALLENGES FOR WOMEN IN THE AUDIT PROFESSION - CASE OF ALBANIA
CHALLENGES FOR WOMEN IN THE AUDIT PROFESSION - CASE OF ALBANIA

Summary/Abstract: Gender equality and gender balance are keywords in the todays’ professional environment and are having increasing impact on the companies’ policies and code of conducts as well as on the overall attitude among professional people. Finance, accounting and auditing are only some of the professions where women have been historically engaged in Albania, even in the time of centralized economy. First hand observation of reality suggests that even though women seem to be more in number than man, among the auditors, both external and internal auditors, it is not easy for women to climb the career steps towards leading and managerial roles or gain partnerships in their firms and this seems to be a common trend globally. Within this wide global context this paper tries to search this reality in Albania and focuses on the challenges of the women auditors in our country. The raise several questions such as: How can we describe the situation of women in the audit profession in Albania in terms of numbers, years in career and advancement to higher positions in companies of external auditing or in departments of internal audit? Which are the main challenges that auditor women face in their profession in Albania, trying to make a distinction between common global factors that impact the profession overall in the world, and which may be specific factors in Albania. We answer this questions semi-structured interviews targeting professional women that work as freelance auditors, as partners in auditing firms (including the big 4) and as internal auditors in big companies in Albania. The results of the study revealed that long working hours, preference of Albanian clients to work with male auditors, non-results driven performance management and gender stereotyping were perceived to be the biggest challenges that women auditors are currently experiencing.

• Details
• Contents