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Purpose – This chapter explores my responses to Carolyn Steedman’s Landscape for a Good Woman (1986) as a historian and an educated working-class woman and considers the ‘blind spots’ in some commentary on the book. The aim of this study is to unpick understandings of subjectivity, class and education in certain kinds of academic text.

Methodology/Approach – The chapter draws on a qualitative analysis of works of history and cultural studies and reflections on the author’s own emotions and experiences.

Findings – Education and class are equally important in the experiences of educated working-class people, but there are considerable difficulties in communicating these different aspects of selfhood and in ensuring they are understood.

Originality/Value – ‘Autobiographical histories’ as a form, and the use of the first person in contexts where it is not usually accepted, provide new possibilities of identification and knowledge for marginalised peoples. ‘Vulnerable writing’ therefore has a political purpose.

This paper aims to make an assessment of the contribution made by accounting histories of women produced since 1992 and the current state of knowledge production in this subject area.

The study is based on a review of published sources on accounting history and women's, gender and feminist history.

Whereas feminist historians and historians of gender boast substantial advances in research and transformative impacts on the wider discipline of history, similar momentum is less evident in accounting history. It is argued that over the past 15 years scholarship has remained substantially in the “recovery” phase, has not “defamiliarized” the sub‐field and is yet to engage with developments in feminist and gender historiography which offer regenerative potential.

The paper argues that sex and gender differentiation persist in both the past and the present and their study should feature large on the accounting history research agenda.

Core themes in feminist and gender history are explored with a view to identifying research questions for accounting historians. These themes include the oppression and subordination of women, the public‐private divide, restoring women to history, devising new periodisations, investigating socio‐cultural relations, and the construction of identities.

No Japanese records management colleagues can forget the name of Mr. William Benedon. He, the former President of IRMC, took the key role to push the establishment of the Japanese Records Management Society by presenting the first comprehensive records management textbook Records Management System in Japanese in 1988.

Once again the headhunters are busy, capturing talent and delivering their trophies to the boardrooms of the capital. Since professional Records Managers (as opposed to ‘let's pretend’ PQ accountants) are a rare species, the hunt this last year has been particularly tense. Only by offering thrilling inducements has the ‘big game’ been caught. In the majority of cases, the headhunters' brief is short and simple: to bag a records manager who will set up a system out of chaos and then run it efficiently. This is a tall order. In the majority of cases the existing records management systems are a veritable Augean Stables, the corruption and confusion has now reached such a depth as to prompt urgent attention from top management. A Hercules is required and, if to be attracted, his or her labours will need to be rewarded handsomely. Not so long ago, the going rate for a Records Manager able to organize a system from scratch was of the order of £20,000. Since this inducement commonly resulted in the recruitment of a Hercules more after the manner of Aristophanes than of Aeschylus, a process of salary inflation deriving from scarcity took over. A few months ago, one leading firm of city recruiters were offering £70,000 + for a manager skilled enough to organize a market‐maker's backrooms. Although no doubt exceptional, this level of remuneration (which, when taking the ‘package’ into account, topped six figures) reflects the growing desperation felt in business for the type of executive who really can make order out of chaos and a filing system out of a heap of contract notes.