Who Gets the Credit? Why Attribution Deserves a Closer Look
The Matilda Effect offers a lens for understanding how recognition shapes advancement in accounting firms.
By Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
Accounting MOVE Project
The accounting profession has spent years grappling with a persistent and uncomfortable reality: women enter the field in strong numbers, perform at a high level, and yet remain underrepresented in leadership.
That gap has been measured repeatedly through industry research, like the Accounting MOVE Project. The harder question is why it keeps showing up. The answer may lie in something more fundamental than policy or pipeline: how work is recognized, attributed, and ultimately rewarded,
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That’s where the Matilda Effect comes in.
The Matilda Effect is about attribution, not participation.
First defined by historian Margaret Rossiter in Social Studies of Science, the Matilda Effect describes the systematic tendency for women’s contributions to be overlooked — or credited to men.
When contributions are not accurately recognized, firms are not just creating internal inequities; they are undermining leadership development, pushing experienced professionals out the door, and losing people who can easily take their talent elsewhere.
It is not simply about exclusion from opportunity. It is about who gets recognized as the source of ideas, innovation, and results. Participation without recognition does not build careers, particularly in a profession where visibility drives opportunity.
History shows the pattern clearly.
Long before anyone had a name for it, the Matilda Effect was quietly reshaping the scientific record.
