In recent years, accounting academics have described a malaise within the accounting academy (see e.g., Hopwood, 2007;
Rayburn, 2006). In supporting this observation, these critics point to the marked conservatism and conformity of accounting
research that is increasingly seen as ‘‘too cautious and conservative, too rigid and traditional, and insufficiently attuned to
grapple with the new and to embrace novel insights and bodies of knowledge’’ (Hopwood, 2007, p. 1370). This conservatism
and conformity is seen to threaten the ongoing viability or sustainability of the accounting academy. In particular, these
qualities tend to reward the replication of past achievements such as addressing familiar research questions and issues using
‘‘new’’ statistical techniques rather than encouraging a more dynamic process of adjustment and adaptability in the research
undertaken and the connections to accounting practice attempted. These criticisms suggest an unthinking adherence to past
patterns and formulas rather than advocacy of dynamic processes of adjustment. Processes of dynamic adjustment underpin
ecosystem sustainability. Capra (2002) argues that the development and maintenance of sustainable communities can be
modeled after such ecosystems and offers six principles to guide these efforts. In this essay, I draw loosely upon three of these
principles to organize observations on existing and possible connections between gender and the sustainability of the
accounting academy (community). The three principles used are diversity (enhancing the resilience of communities by