In the summer of 2018, Marsha M. Huber (Youngstown State University), Lawrence Murphy Smith (Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi RELLIS Campus) and I spoke about a creating a special issue related to gender issues and work-life balance. Both individuals promptly agreed to be guest editors.

Over the past two years, the American Accounting Association (AAA) and the Journal (Elsevier), publicized the special issue call inviting manuscript submissions devoted to gender issues and work-life balance (GIWB) as they relate to accounting education, in particular obtaining an understanding of how gender and/or work-life balance affect accounting education including descriptions of approaches that faculty can use to help students become aware of gender and/or work-life balance issues at school and in accounting practice. For example, research has shown that work-life balance is related to ethical performance; consequently, informing students via reading assignments, short cases, role-playing, team projects, etc. regarding the importance of work-life balance can benefit them while in school and later in their careers, thereby helping them attain and maintain the highest levels of ethical performance. Regarding gender, research has shown that the role of women in accounting has greatly increased over the past several decades, and that by having both male and female input has a positive impact on accounting practice, audit teams, corporate boards, etc. Consequently, informing students regarding the role of gender can help them in their future careers appreciate the contributions of both genders to the accounting profession and business practice.