Majoring in accounting: Effects of gender, difficulty, career opportunities, and the impostor phenomenon on student choice

Staff level public accounting firm employees are roughly gender-balanced, leading one to believe accounting majors should be similarly balanced. However, some universities find their female-identifying student population to be smaller than expected. Students have many reasons for choosing a particular major, including personality fit, subject aptitude, and career opportunities. Likewise, students may avoid certain majors due to perceived difficulty and feelings of impostor phenomenon (IP), which can be described as a feeling of not being good enough or smart enough despite evidence to the contrary. This study seeks to discover how gender, perceived difficulty, impostor phenomenon, and perceived opportunity impact a student’s decision to major in accounting. We find that those who rate career opportunities as high relative to other majors are more likely to choose accounting as a major. Additionally, students with high IP are more likely to major in accounting than other students. Interestingly, women with high IP who also perceive accounting to be a difficult major are even more likely to major in accounting than other students. This appears to be due to the common drive of high IP individuals to continue to strive to convince themselves and others that they are not the impostors they believe themselves to be.