Gender inequality and disabled inclusivity in accounting higher education during crisis

Abstract

In this paper, we find that during financial crises, the wage gap between female and male accounting professionals reduces and affects gender inequality in higher education. In addition, less support and lower wages for disabled accounting professionals demotivate disabled students in accounting higher education. Because of budget cuts during financial crisis, universities limit their support to women and the disabled. We consider 104 universities from the UK Higher Education Statistic Agency (HESA) database for 2005– 2011. The theoretical and empirical findings of this paper establish the positive growth in female students and the negative growth in disabled accounting students during the recent financial crisis. The established link between higher education and the accounting profession enriches the existing accounting literature and assists policymakers in identifying a better strategy to enhance equality and inclusion of disabled students in accounting higher education to address inequality and non-inclusivity in the accounting profession, especially during financial crisis.