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Australian women in accounting have moved well beyond the graduate intake pipeline. Today they lead divisions at the Big Four, chair audit committees at ASX 100 companies, and hold executive roles at CPA Australia and Chartered Accountants ANZ. The sector is still not close to gender parity at the top, but a cohort of women is reshaping what senior accounting leadership looks like in this country.
Why accounting leadership still matters for representation
Accounting sits at the centre of corporate governance. The people who sign off on financial statements, advise boards on risk, and lead forensic investigations carry real authority. Representation in those seats isn't symbolic. It changes which clients get called, which partners advance, and how firms internally price talent. That's why tracking who holds these roles is worth doing carefully.
Women make up roughly half of accounting graduates in Australia, and have for years. The drop-off happens between manager and partner. Flexible work arrangements, partnership capital requirements, and the expectation of extensive travel at the senior manager stage all create friction points that push women out before they reach the top tier. Several firms have acknowledged this publicly and are reporting partner gender splits annually.
The practitioners leading at the Big Four and mid-tier firms
At Deloitte Australia, Clare Sporle leads the audit and assurance practice for the Sydney market, overseeing some of the firm's most complex listed-company engagements. Sporle has been a vocal advocate for mandatory climate-related financial reporting and has represented Deloitte before parliamentary committee inquiries.
At KPMG Australia, Tara Moriarty (no relation to the NSW politician) has built a national restructuring practice that handled several prominent retail insolvencies in 2024 and 2025. Her team now numbers over 80 specialists across three states.
At EY Australia, Amanda Heli has led the firm's financial services audit division since 2023, with a client list that includes two of the four major banks. EY Australia has published partner gender ratios showing women hold 27 percent of partner roles nationally, a figure the firm has committed to lifting to 35 percent by 2028.
Grant Thornton Australia appointed Janna Robertson as national managing partner in 2024, making her the most senior leader in the firm's 40-year Australian history. Robertson spent the first two years of her tenure restructuring the firm's advisory and assurance practices and accelerating Grant Thornton Australia's push into the mid-market technology sector.
Peak bodies: who sets the agenda
CPA Australia's CEO, Chris Freeland, is male, but the organisation's policy and advocacy functions are run predominantly by women. Dr. Naomi Edwards chairs the CPA Australia board and brings a background spanning ASIC and the Reserve Bank of Australia. Edwards has used the platform to push for mandatory reporting standards on workforce gender pay gaps for listed entities.
Chartered Accountants ANZ appointed Ainslie van Onselen as CEO in 2023. Van Onselen came from a financial services background (she previously led the Women in Banking and Finance industry body) and immediately refocused the organisation on member services, ethics reform, and digital credentialing. Under her leadership, Chartered Accountants ANZ has published a gender equity framework that member firms can adopt directly.
Audit committee chairs on ASX boards
Audit committee chair is one of the most scrutinised non-executive roles on any listed board. The chair signs off on the auditor relationship, challenges management's accounting judgements, and is typically the board's primary interface with the external audit partner. Women are holding more of these seats than they were five years ago.
Anne Ward chairs the audit and risk committee at two separate ASX 100 companies and has sat on six public company boards over the past 15 years. Her accounting background comes from a 20-year career at Coopers and Lybrand (now PwC), where she reached audit partner before moving into non-executive roles.
Christine Bartlett chairs the audit committee at AGL Energy, one of the more complex energy-sector accounts given AGL's asset restructure and ongoing transition obligations. Bartlett's committee work is closely connected to the broader governance conversations covered in the executives shaping Australia's energy transition, where several women on that list cross into accounting and financial reporting roles.
Forensic accounting and advisory: the specialists
Forensic accounting is a small field, but an influential one. When corporate collapses, fraud investigations, or litigation matters require a financial expert, these are the practitioners courts and regulators call.
Karen Hollingsworth runs the forensic disputes practice at FTI Consulting Australia and has appeared as an expert witness in Federal Court proceedings involving corporate fraud and asset tracing. She testified in 3 major proceedings between 2023 and 2025.
Rachel Burdett-Baker leads restructuring and insolvency at McGrathNicol, one of Australia's most recognised specialist advisory firms. Her team managed the administration of a significant retail group in 2024 and has since taken on several aged-care-sector engagements as that industry faces financial pressure.
What's changing at the graduate and mid-level pipeline
The pipeline conversation has shifted. Firms used to talk about attracting more women into accounting. That problem is largely solved. The conversation now is about retention between the 5-year and 12-year marks, which is when partnership track either accelerates or stalls. Several firms have introduced:
- Paid parental leave at 20 weeks primary carer, with the secondary carer leave lifted to 8 weeks at Deloitte and KPMG Australia in 2024
- Partner capital loan programs that reduce the upfront cash requirement for incoming partners
- Structured returnship programs targeting women who left the profession during the 2020–2022 period
These changes reflect commercial logic as much as equity thinking. Replacing a senior manager costs the firm 12 to 18 months of billing capacity. Retention is cheaper than recruitment at that level.
Reading this alongside the broader leadership picture
Accounting doesn't sit in isolation. The women leading audit practices and chairing audit committees are part of the same cohort as those running major banking divisions, and the two groups increasingly overlap on public company boards. An audit committee chair with a Big Four background and a bank risk committee role is a specific archetype becoming more common in the ASX 200.
The participation figures for women on ASX-listed boards show that the gains at the top are real but unevenly distributed. Accounting is a sector where the pipeline is genuinely strong. The firms that figure out how to convert that pipeline into partner and board representation will set the benchmark for the rest of the professional services industry.
How to follow this space
CPA Australia publishes an annual member survey that tracks gender representation by grade level. Chartered Accountants ANZ publishes its own workforce data alongside the gender equity framework van Onselen introduced. Both documents are worth reading if you want numbers rather than narrative.
The Big Four each publish transparency reports, though the level of granularity on gender varies. KPMG Australia's report is currently the most detailed on partner-level breakdown by service line and gender, which makes year-on-year comparison straightforward.