Although the principle of diversity contributes to sustainability, diversity alone is insufficient to address contemporary
concerns. Attention to the relative numbers of women and men and their relative opportunities is important. However,
focusing upon the entry of more women into the accounting academy is unlikely to significantly change its values or its
workings. In addressing the sustainability of the academy, focus should also be given to the gendering of accounting research
and our conceptions of the ‘‘good academic accountant.’’ Although little research in accounting has addressed this issue, the
extant work suggests that such gendering has unduly limited the qualities associated with individual success. These
qualities, in turn, impact and limit the range of research projects, questions and methodologies regarded as relevant or
appropriate and thereby contribute to the production and maintenance of spheres of systematic ignorance. This gendering
also limits how we understand our roles as academics, how we frame our concerns about the academy and how we couch our
proposed solutions for such concerns. In these ways and many others, our gendering of the ‘‘good academic accountant’’
inhibits the academy’s openness to different theories, ideas and values, a failure to attend to Capra’s principle of networks –
an openness to flows of energy and matter. The strong association of the ‘‘good academic accountant’’ with masculine
qualities/values inhibits the inclusion of other qualities/values associated with the feminine from the range of possibilities
we might wish to incorporate in our search for a dynamic balance. Moving toward a more dynamic balance may require
developing multiple definitions for the ‘‘good academic accountant’’, definitions that incorporate both masculine and
feminine qualities. These definitions would offer existing academics the opportunity to shift their emphases and attentions
allowing for greater flexibility in their career trajectories as well as encouraging the entry of new academics possessing a
different range of qualities than those promoted by the existing definition.