Women accountants with 25 years of experience earn about 70 cents for every dollar made by their male counterparts—a far wider gap than Canada’s 88-cent national average, and one that may be exacerbating the industry’s talent crisis.

New median compensation data from CPA Canada suggests that, by one measure, women at the top of the accounting field today are further behind than the average woman in 1981, when Canada’s national gender wage gap was 75 cents on the dollar.

Industry leaders say they’re puzzled that some employers aren’t doing more to retain women as the sector continues to bleed talent. 

“It’s very expensive to turn talent: to lose them and bring someone in and train them anew. This is fundamentally a talent issue,” said Tanya van Biesen, CEO of VersaFi, a non-profit that has worked with firms like PwC and EY to help advance women in finance. 

CPA Canada, an organization for chartered professional accountants, said men’s median compensation at the top experience level is $229,000, $69,000 above women’s. Across all age groups, men’s median compensation is $167,000, compared with $139,000 for women—a nearly 17 per cent gap.

It’s a facet of a bigger problem facing senior women across the country. Canadian women aged 25 to 34 earned a median of 96 cents on the dollar compared with male peers, according to Statistics Canada data from May 2024, but that figure drops to 83 cents among those aged 45 to 54.

Many women in finance see pay parity early in their careers, van Biesen said, but problems accumulate around parental or elder care leave. Those absences often coincide with accountants’ early 30s when they are considered for partnership or assigned bigger clients or audits. Once a firm hands off major clients, they can be difficult to win back, she said. 

The Logic’s analysis of recent Canadian partnership appointments at Deloitte, KPMG and PwC suggests 43 per cent were female-presenting. EY Canada, which has not yet released its most recent partnership class, said last year’s class was evenly split, with 50 per cent women. PwC Canada said it doesn’t track gender by yearly partnership class, but said women make up 35 per cent of its overall partnership, up from 30 per cent in 2021. KPMG Canada’s total partnership is 33 per cent women, though women are a majority of its executive team. All four firms have internal programs aimed at developing women leaders.

CPA Canada’s data suggests in-house accountants at mining and software firms see the largest pay discrepancy, with women making less than 70 cents for each dollar their male counterparts earn.

“Firms don’t, generally, have a pay equity problem at like-for-like levels… They have a progression, client and project-allocation problem: Who gets the big clients, who gets sponsored, who gets promoted early,” she said.

Globally, talent has been flooding out of accounting firms’ partnership pipelines, as business school grads eye industries where they aren’t expected to spend tax season at their desks. Employment in the accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping and payroll services sector has been flatlining for about three years, according to Statistics Canada data, despite median CPA compensation rising from $124,000 in 2021 to $150,000 last year. Median income reported by auditors, accountants and investment professionals in the 2021 census was lower than similar fields like financial analysts and management consultants.

Cal Jungwirth, who recruits accountants in his role at Robert Half Canada, said something atypical is afoot in accounting. Firms are cautious to offer jobs due to geopolitical uncertainty, even as they report shortages of skills like AI competency. 

“Organisations got very lean during the pandemic, and they haven’t necessarily added [back] the head count,” said Jungwirth. “They need to work extra hard to attract younger professionals into the field… individuals are looking for a different type of work-life balance.”  

Some in the industry see red flags in the reports of dismal work-life balance and foundering compensation growth over the course of women’s careers.

“There are a lot of employee resource groups, but in many cases, while peers are quite supportive, there’s still a demand for the marginalized individual to actually help train and educate the non-marginalized employees,” said Merridee Bujaki, an accounting professor at Carleton University. Bujaki said there are cultural challenges within firms, both for women and other marginalized groups that have historically faced pay gaps in corporate Canada.

“The culture is still not, I think, where it needs to be.” 

The issues don’t seem abstract to CPA Canada executive Sylvie Monette, who was a stay-at-home mom for five years at the start of her career, and saw women retreat from leadership over the years to balance caregiving responsibilities while their husbands’ careers progressed. She said many hoped to rebound but “that difference keeps on getting worse with time.”  

“Either you burn out, or you get depressed. Then you say, ‘I can’t do it. I’m going to slow down the ambition for my career.’” 

Child care was one of the least-offered perks in benefit packages, with only 15 per cent of non-owner accountants getting top-up benefits for caregiver leaves in 2024, the CPA survey said. KPMG said it’s expanding a Vancouver pilot program to better support new mothers.

Despite her concerns about parental leave handoffs and the added demands on employee resource groups, Bujaki is hopeful for change.

“We are doing pretty well as a profession, welcoming women in. Retaining them is a different challenge,” she said. ”I look at who’s in my classroom, and they are all aspiring professional accountants, it is a very diverse group.”