Search results

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how “New Deal” regulatory initiatives, primarily the Securities Acts and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), changed US auditors’ professional knowledge conception, culminating in the 1938 expansion of the Committee on Accounting Procedure (CAP), the first US body to set accounting principles.

The paper combines Halliday’s (1985) knowledge mandates with Hancher and Moran’s (1989) regulatory space to attain a theory-based understanding of auditors’ changing knowledge conceptions amid regulatory pressure. It draws on a range of primary and secondary sources to examine the period from 1929 to 1938.

Following the stock market crash, the newly created SEC aimed to engage auditors as a means to regulate companies’ accounting practices based on a set of codified principles. While entailing increased status, this new role conflicted with the auditors’ knowledge conception, which was based on professional judgment and personal integrity. Pressure from the SEC and academics eventually made auditors agree to a codification of their professional knowledge and create the CAP as a cooperative regulatory solution.

The paper explores the role of auditors’ knowledge conceptions in the emergence of today’s standard setting. It is suggested that auditors’ incomplete control of their professional knowledge made standard setting a form of co-regulation, located between the actors occupying the regulatory space of accounting.

Women’s empowerment remains a key development challenge in Kenya. The purpose of this study is to attempt to understand the status of women’s empowerment and the key contributors to their disempowerment in Kenya’s aquaculture sector.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 534 male and female fish farmers from 300 households drawn from six counties in Kenya (Kakamega, Kisumu, Kisii, Kiambu, Meru and Nyeri). The Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI) was adapted to Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Fisheries and Aquaculture Index (A-WEFI) to suit the aquaculture and fisheries sub-sector. The adapted A-WEFI was then used to estimate and the status of women’s and men’s using five domains of empowerment (5DE) and a gender parity index (GPI). Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Cramer’s V and sensitivity analysis as test statistics.

About 86% of the men and 80% of the women were classified as empowered. The mean score of the 5DE was 0.93 and 0.95 for women and men, respectively. In addition, 82% of the households achieved gender parity, suggesting that for such households, empowerment of men was no greater than that of women. Overall, the results suggest no major differences between the empowerment of women and men. Findings suggest areas of improvement in empowerment: when observed separately, women report lack of agency in production, resource, time-use and allocation and leadership.

This paper adapts the A-WEAI to the fisheries and aquaculture context, in bid to bridge the gap in standard women’s empowerment measurement methods in this area. Also, there are limited empirical studies on the multifaceted empowerment of women in aquaculture in Kenya. The findings are meant to serve as a point of reference for policymakers, as they develop gender-responsive intervention programmes, and in implementing gender mainstreaming in Kenya.