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This article aims to provide an overview on key trends in public sector policy and professional development and how they intersect with gender and diversity. It seeks to explore new configurations in the relationship between gender and the professions and to develop a matrix for the collection of articles presented in this volume.

The authors link social policy and governance approaches to the study of professions, using the health professions and academics as case studies. Material from a number of studies carried out by the authors together with published secondary sources provide the basis of our analysis; this is followed by an introduction of the scope and structure of this thematic issue.

The findings underline the significance of public policy as key to better understand gender and diversity in professional groups. The outline of major trends in public sector professions brings into focus both the persistence of gender inequality and the emergence of new lines of gendered divisions in the professions.

The research presented here highlights a need for new models of public sector management and professional development that are more sensitive to equality and diversity.

This article focuses on the “making” of inequality at the interface of public policy and professional action. It introduces a context sensitive approach that moves beyond equal opportunity policies and managerial accounts and highlights new directions in research and policy.

Changing market conditions, new modes of labour and decreasing legitimisation of experts, as well as an increasing ratio of women, pose new challenges to the professions. These ongoing dynamics are especially visible in the health care system – a traditional professional field with strongly formalised rules governing entrance, initiation and career paths. In addition, this field is highly segregated according to sexes. How do the bove‐mentioned processes of change present themselves and what economic, social or structural factors cause them? What role does gender play within these processes? What potential lies in the re‐structuring processes of health care systems as far as a gender equal architecture and design of professions is concerned? These and other questions are addressed in this collection of papers. For the main part they grew out of a thematic focus event organised and coordinated by the editors for the 5th Conference of the European Sociological Association (ESA) Research Network Sociology of Professions that was held in 2001 in Helsinki. Inspired by the richness of the research results on professions and gender in health care systems in various European countries and new horizons which opened up from the comparative perspective in different countries, professions, and theoretical approaches, and finally motivated by very constructive ensuing discussions, we decided to continue the discussion with a publication.

This study aims to explore intersectional gender inequalities that exist in accounting organizations.

A review of the literature, covering the period from 1990 to 2020, assesses the intersectionality of professional and social factors that shape inequalities in women’s professional accounting careers.

This study presents the complex facets of women’s inequality in gendered accounting organizations. The results reveal that inequity persists in accounting organizations despite organizational changes. The findings highlight the relevance of further research in gendered organizations to capture the intersectionality of gender with other forms of inequality.

This review informs professional organizations, accountants and company managers about the persistence of gender concerns in the accountancy profession in the last 30 years, despite stated accounting profession commitments to achieve gender equality, as promoted by United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, some possible solutions are proposed.

This study focuses on a complex and challenging issue, contributing to the literature by extending classical narrative literature. This study presents a structured view of the various intersections of professional and social characteristics that created inequalities and the suggested solutions.

What part does gender play in professionalism? How does gender translate into hierarchies in professions? This paper attempts to deal with these questions and to move towards an embedded approach that can account for paradoxes of gender and professions. It focuses on the notion of context and the hypothesis that gender is both stable and variable. Using empirical material from a multi‐method study of the German dental profession, three main issues are considered: the impact of different structuring modes and diverse actors on gender relations, the relation of gender difference and hierarchy, and differentiation between women as a group. Gender becomes manifest on the symbolic level as well as in structural arrangements. However, its impact on each of these levels varies. Most striking is the empirical proof that gender does not lead to the construction of hierarchies under all conditions. Female symbolism can also favour women. Professionalisation theories help to reconstruct these processes.

Concomitant with the trend towards specialisation in UK accountancy and the rise of relatively separate formal spheres of professional work along formal specialisms such as tax, audit and management consultancy, women entered the profession in unprecedented numbers, but not evenly distributed across those specialisms. This paper aims to draw on the sociology of accountancy and feminist studies of the professions to show that specialisms have emerged through and, in turn, have been shaped and recreated by gender as well as other processes.

The paper's research approach combines the sociology of professions with critical gender studies. It draws on interviews, brochures, web pages, and results from a questionnaire survey to investigate professional identities within UK accountancy.

Accountants' self-articulated notions of professionalism in the different specialisms are gendered and ordered hierarchically. Gender is an encompassing conceptual frame for ordering discursive attributes of the different specialisms. Working long and unpredictable hours was central to accountants' understandings of their professional life. Socialising with clients was seen as functional in bringing new opportunities to the firm. Socialising with peers also was deemed important, especially in solving internal frictions and in controlling new entrants' behaviour in firms. The more “public” the ideology of a specialism, the more masculine it was perceived to be.

This study challenges the uniform representations of professional identities offered by previous studies. It suggests that gender offers a discursive and ideological frame of reference for accountancy whose relevance extends beyond the working practices of men and women to the very constitution of the profession. It does so with reference to an original mix of qualitative and quantitative data.

This purpose of this paper is to engage two enduring sets of assumptions within nursing: firstly, that woman with children should prioritise the care of children; and secondly, that nursing standards require nurses to put their profession above other priorities. Commitment is linked to full-time working which contrasts sharply with the reality for many women with children who need to work part-time and are not able to change or extend working hours

This qualitative research involved the use of 32 in-depth interviews with 32 female registered nurses with children and without children. They were employed in “acute” nursing, aged between 25 and 60 years, and in registered grades “D” to “senior nurse manager”. They worked or had worked on a variety of employment conditions, some, but not all, had taken career breaks. The rationale for exclusively selecting women was based on the need to identify and describe organisational, situational and individual factors related to women and the associations and barriers which affected their careers.

In a female-dominated profession, we find the profession resisting attempts to make the profession more accessible to women with young children. The career progression of women with children is inhibited, and this is driven in part by a determination to maintain “traditional” employment practices.

This paper develops Heilman’s argument that gender perceptions, by both males and females, can be biased against women, and these produce gender inequalities in employment. These findings are relevant across many areas of employment, and they are significant in relation to broadening the debate around equal opportunities for women.

The purpose of this paper is to export the role of professional bodies within the property industry in Australia in bringing about gender equality. In particular the policy objectives of the various professional bodies is analysed and contrasted with the level of genres equality demonstrated within the governance structures of the organisations at national and regional level.

The paper analyses the annual reports of the leading property professional bodies in Australia to identify any gender equity policy objectives and to identify the balance between male and female representation in the governing boards of the associations.

The research shows that while a few organisations have made some statements regarding the need for change to a more inclusive property industry these objectives are not reflected within the governance structure of the organisations. It is therefore evident that significant attitudinal and structural change will be required to bring about equality within the property industry.

The research is limited to the Australian property and construction industry and the relevant boards at national and state level.

The paper highlights the need to address gender inequality at the senior management level within the professional associations that govern the property profession. The professional associations are uniquely placed to show leadership in promoting gender equality and should be adopting policy within the organisations charter to being about a shift in attitudes to women within management roles in the property industry.

The issue of gender equity is highly topical and this paper adds to the research in this area. It highlights the important role that professional associations could take in bringing about change, but reveals that many professional bodies have a worse gender balance at the governance level than many of their member firms.

The paper is the first to analyse the gender mix within the professional bodies in Australia which govern and advise the property and construction industries. As such it reveals that little progress has been made in bringing about gender equality in the profession.

The paper addresses the question of the contribution made by health service institutions towards the perpetuation of gender inequality within health occupations.

Institutions that enable the medical profession to exercise influence over the working, training and examination practices of other health occupations will be looked at in their role as sustaining the dominance of the medical profession over all other health services. Statistically analysing the proportions of women and men in health occupations the paper examines whether this is a gender‐specific form of dominance. Using an institutionalist actor‐centred approach it will be examined whether the stability of the subordination of the allied occupations depends on whether the medical profession is also a corporate actor allotted a central steering function in the governance of the health system. A comparison is made between Germany and Italy.

In Germany and Italy physicians fulfil the criteria for professional dominance. It is shown that in both countries there exists a gender‐specific segregation across the health occupations, women being under‐represented in the profession of physician, and greatly over‐represented in the subordinate occupations. Therefore, the dominance of the medical profession is gender‐specific. The dominance of the medical profession in Germany is reinforced by several institutions with the consequence of stagnation in the traditional relationship between physicians and allied health occupations. In Italy, more self‐determination of the allied health occupations in the areas of training and examination has become a distinct possibility.

This is the first paper to assess the impact of health care institutions on gender inequality within the health services.

This chapter reports on the findings of the fourth wave of a longitudinal study of the image of accountants regarding perceptions of their instrumental and expressive traits. The four waves were conducted in 1972, 1982, 1992, and 2002. The images germane to this research were those reflected in the “looking glass” of undergraduate students, a relevant peer group of those potentially contemplating entry into the accounting profession. The accountant's stereotype has been blamed for harming the ability of the profession to attract individuals with excellent human relations and communications skills. The negative image originated when accounting was a male-dominated endeavor. Gender typing is important in forming impressions of vocational choices. Thus, this study investigates the manner in which the accountant's image has evolved as its gender composition has become balanced. My focus is on comparing the 2002 wave with the 1972 and 1992 waves. The latter comparison covers the period of the “Enron era” scandals.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the way gender may be used as an instrument to avoid New Public Management (NPM) potential processes of deprofessionalisation in nursing.

In total, 83 nurses with managerial duties were interviewed in autonomous and corporate public hospitals in Portugal.

Nurses used gender as an argument to legitimate their presence in management, and in this way, to keep their control over the profession. Gender stereotypes were used to legitimate their position in two different ways. Firstly, nurses reproduced and reinforced gendered inequality by supporting their male colleagues careers. Secondly, they valorised their feminine skills sustaining that women were in better position to manage hospitals as an extended role from the private domain.

The paper uses a sample from only one country and care must be taken when extrapolating conclusions to the wider population.

Acknowledges the way NPM reinforces gender stereotypes and contributes to redefine professionalism.

Recognition of the complexity and diversity of gender issues in the organisational context and in the structuration of professional legitimacy.