Retention in Public Accounting: Who Stays, Who Leaves, and Why Experiences Differ Across Race, Gender, and Sexuality

ABSTRACT This paper synthesizes 62 peer‐reviewed accounting studies to examine how retention in public accounting is shaped across race, gender, and sexuality. Using a systematic review and thematic synthesis, the study applies intersectionality as an interpretive lens to integrate findings from literatures that have developed unevenly. Across studies, retention emerges as a cumulative organizational process shaped by routine workplace practices that are formally neutral but unevenly experienced, including evaluation and advancement systems, work allocation, expectations around availability, and local workplace climate. For practitioners, the findings help explain why retention challenges persist despite policy change and underscore the importance of considering how ostensibly uniform policies and practices can affect individuals differently depending on intersecting identities and local context. For researchers, the review reframes retention as an ongoing process and identifies key gaps in intersectional and longitudinal evidence.