Page 95 of younger employees and of employees from different educations other than cand.merc.aud would help with retentions issues. A solution for more women, or auditors in general to pursue becoming an SAA, would be the possibility of studying for the SAA exam and working as SAA on parttime. Female role models and in general greater diversity reflected in role models would inspire more to become SAAs. An
improvement of working conditions, and especially regarding returning to work after one’s parental leave is another solution to consider. Lastly, the retention of female auditors can be attained by offering greater flexibility when auditors wish to enter the SAA programme.
Page 96 possible factors shaping women’s decision to become SAAs. In one perspective the fact that we have
extracted our themes based on previous research means that our finding builds on top previous research and provide an uncovered perspective. In another perspective it limits our finding to stay withing the same mindsets and thoughts of structures as already exist in the researched area. We have aimed to reduce the limitation by making the interview semi-structures to make the respondents able to talk and interpret our questions as they like. However, our findings are to an extent biased by the general bias of researcher unconsciously aim to validate their own assumptions.
The aim of this study is to understand what factors shape women’s decision to become SAAs placing our research in the field of gender research. Our research is based on the binary gender system, we are focused on the conditions of women in a system based on social interactions among men and women. The previous studies applied in our literature review and the theory of Bourdieu are both based on the binary gender system regarding gender as only “men and women”. The binary gender system originated from the biological differences of the sex. The binary gender identities are either a cisgendered or transgendered man or woman. Today a long range of binary understanding of genders have emerged. The new non-binary understanding of gender includes a wider understanding of the genders than only female and male including gender variations in between female and male and different to both female and male. Thus, currently there is emerging a disruption of the old binary gender system in in favour of a new non-binary gender system (Danmark, u.d.). Therefore, one implication of our findings is that they are based on the binary gender system which according to the emergence of the non-binary system might not be scoping our subjects “female auditors” correct. Therefore, the factors we have found to explain the decision of female auditors’ decision to become SAAs are maybe biased because they are assumed to indicate what shapes the decision to become SAAs for the group of auditors born with a biologically female sex, but instead they might be explaining a certain type of “auditors” beyond the gender.
Therefore, future research could bring new perspective to our findings by broaden the perception of gender in accordance with the non-binary gender system. Additionally, it could be interesting to
understand how the current challenge of the auditing industry of recruit “women” to the top management positions in going to develop as the new non-binary system is being more established in society. Maybe it is the factor to changing the culture and the solution to the gender inequality issues?
We chose the theoretical concepts of Bourdieu to frame our analysis which have implied certain qualities and implications to our findings. We chose Bourdieu because his theory is centred on the power dynamics in society, dynamics of genders and the connection between social practise of the individual in relations to the social structures in society including culture, norms and logics. Therefore, Bourdieu have contributed to
Page 97 our finding by emphasising how the implicit and explicit social rules, cultures, norms, and logics can be a determining factor for social phenomena such as gender inequality. Further he addresses how the history of male dominance have been implanted in the underlying system in contemporary society conditioning and reinforcing certain gender dynamics. Therefore, Bourdieu have contributed to our findings by pointing out how the structuring of what seems to be “gender neutral” processes in fact can be determining for a certain gender distribution. One of the limitations of Bourdieu’s theory is a lack to consider and explain agency and social change. Thus, the theory of Bourdieu is applicable to investigate and understand the power distribution and social reproduction in society but is not necessarily adequate to explain change and individual variations. This implicates our finding because we assign the structures a great influence on why women become SAAs, but lack in focusing on the women’s power and ability to make a rational decision.
Additionally, our use of Bourdieu limits our findings regarding explain social change and how to enforce social change.
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