Accountancy's Secret history

In her new book, author Victoria Bateman explains the fascinating secret history of women accountants.

Accountancy is a noble profession, one that has existed for as long as the economy. But we tend to assume that, until relatively recently, accountants were men. After all, only in 1919 did the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) start to admit women, and it wasn’t until 1999 that a woman – Dame Sheila Masters (Baroness Noakes) – became President of the organisation.

But, as I show in my new book, ‘Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power’, women accountants have existed for much longer than the ICAEW. In fact, female accountants – armed with their counting sticks and abacuses – would have been a common sight in the Roman world.

Trade – both local and long-distance – was at the heart of the Roman economy and, with all of the buying and selling that was taking place, an army of people were needed to keep track of the daily transactions and to balance the books, including for the vast private estates of Roman emperors. Huge marble slabs (known as fasti), which would have been placed in a prominent position on the estates of the emperors Claudius and Nero, reveal the names of two women who looked after the emperor’s books. The names Julia Secunda and Claudia Hellas are inscribed on the slabs alongside the job title NUMM, short for nummularius – person who handled money. Appearing on a marble- inscribed slab such as this was a mark of status.

Not everyone who worked for the imperial family was included, only those who had been specially chosen for inscription. Those chosen were in a position of authority, so the fact that two female bookkeepers made their way onto the fasti suggests that they commanded power and respect within the imperial household.

Some have nevertheless doubted whether the two women really were working for the emperor, with one historian having proposed that the title NUMM could be short for the much simpler word nummus (coin) instead of nummularius, implying a giver of money instead of a handler of money. The suggestion is that the two women had bought rather than earned their position of authority – their seat at the table – by making a benefaction. But the fact that these women’s inscriptions take on exactly the same form as all the other entries on the list speaks for itself.

Women can frequently be found in the numerous historical sources that survive from the past; the question is whether or not we choose to take them seriously.

Women with a head for figures were also memorialised on the side of family tombstones in the ancient world. On the tomb of a Roman family involved in the butchery business is a stone carving of a man dressed in a tunic, chopping meat on a butcher’s block, surrounded by joints which hung from a tall wooden rack and a plethora of sharp butchery knives. To his far side – on a throne-like chair – was a woman wearing a long dress with unveiled hair arranged in a neat ‘up-do’. In her hand was a wax tablet, suggesting that she was the person in charge of the general administration of the family business.

Throughout history, family businesses have been the mainstay of the economy. Even today, eight out of every 10 businesses are family owned and they employ more than a half of the UK workforce. While such businesses historically centred around men – with the appendage ‘& sons’ appearing above many a doorway – women have always been busy behind the scenes, performing the hidden labour that supported their husbands’ and fathers’ enterprises. That meant not only keeping on top of the accounts but managing staff, dealing with correspondence and carefully curating social networks in an effort to generate extra clients. Nevertheless, much of this labour was uncounted from the point of view of official statistics. In 1841, when the national census first began to record people’s occupations, the instructions that were given to enumerators stated that the occupations “of wives, or of sons or daughters living with and assisting their parents but not apprenticed or receiving wages, need not be inserted”. Women whose work contributed to the successful running of a family business were rendered invisible.

It was also at this same time – when Britain was in the midst of the Industrial Revolution – that accountancy became an organised profession. As the economy boomed, businesses became more complex, resulting in both greater demand for professional personnel and increasing specialisation. In 1853, Institutes of Accountants emerged in Glasgow and Edinburgh and by the 1870s similar bodies had formed in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield.

In 1880, the ICAEW came to life – as a merger of a number of the smaller and more regional bodies – after being granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria, which gave it the right to set standards within the profession. In 1882, the ICAEW held its first examinations and, by 1885, it faced new competition with the formation of the Society of Accountants and Auditors. Across the professional landscape – and not just in accountancy – more and more organisations formed to act as gatekeepers to the learned professions. And, as they did so, many chose to lock women out of the professions, resulting in the stereotype of the smart suit-wearing male accountant.

In Victorian Britain, the male breadwinner was rapidly becoming the idealised form of family life, meaning that women were expected to spend their adult life as wives and mothers, not as paid professionals. As women were marginalised, their employment opportunities were increasingly restricted to lower paid forms of work, without the rewards and recognition that came with membership of a professional organisation. Those aspiring to a career in accountancy turned instead to the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (SPEW), founded in 1859 by Jessie Boucherett with a mission to support women looking for paid work as bookkeepers, typists and printers. One of the women who attended bookkeeping classes with SPEW was Mary Harris Smith, who went on to work as an accountant for the Royal School of Art Needlework before setting up her own accountancy firm in London in 1887. In that same year, she applied to become a member of the Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors, but was turned away on the basis that she was a woman. Her application to the ICAEW was similarly rejected. Charles Fitch Kemp – the President of the ICAEW in 1895 – noted that he would rather retire than admit women to the Institute.

By the early 20th century, parliament was forced to act. In 1919, the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act made it illegal to disqualify a woman from admission to any incorporated society, or from being appointed to a civil or judicial post or profession on the basis of her sex. Aged 75, Mary Harris Smith renewed her application to the ICAEW. While she had – quite literally – waited a lifetime, her application was at last successful, making her the first official female Chartered Accountant in the UK.

Over in the USA, in 1943, Mary T. Washington Wylie – who was born in Mississippi, lost her mother as a child and was later fostered by a teacher – became the first black woman to be granted a licence to practice as a certified public accountant (CPA). But, despite her qualifications, no accountancy firm would hire a black woman, so Washington Wylie decided to open her own accountancy practice in her basement. Many of her clients were themselves black-owned businesses and, through her recruitment processes, she supported the accountancy careers of fellow African-Americans. When she retired, aged 75, she was gifted a charm bracelet with a charm to represent each of the 30 employees that had earned their CPA licence whilst working for her. She lived to the age of 93.

Women have also long been putting their accountancy skills to good use in the world beyond accountancy. Elizabeth Arden – who dropped out of nursing college and became a bookkeeper at a pharmaceutical company – established a make-up business that developed its own products and recruited travelling saleswomen and demonstrators, as well as opening its own worldwide salons. It became the first beauty company to sell eye make-up in the United States. MacKenzie Scott worked alongside Jeff Bezos (her then husband) to build Amazon into one of the biggest and most recognisable companies in the modern day, including by looking after the company accounts.

Accountants have always been the mainstay of any business but the notion that women only entered accountancy in the 20th century is a historical myth. Women have been looking after the books and managing the financial fortunes of companies for centuries.

See our Book Club review, page 39

• Dr Victoria Bateman is author of Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power (out now with Headline Press). She teaches macroeconomics and economic history at Oxford and Cambridge universities