Diane Dutton knew as a child that she would be an accountant.

Her father crunched numbers for a living, and Dutton began assisting him with small administrative tasks when she was 8 years old. She continued to work in his office through high school and after she started studying accounting at New York's Pace University in 1975.

"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," said Dutton, who's now the chief financial officer for Prudential Americana Group, Realtors in Las Vegas. "I always knew I would go into this field."

As a woman entering accounting in the 1970s, Dutton was a rarity. She recalled sitting in on a graduate-level accounting class at Pace in 1975, shortly before she began there; she estimated about 10 percent of the class was female. But that changed quickly: By 1979, when she took the class, as many as 40 percent of the attendees were women.

That demographic shift is even more apparent in recent numbers from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The bureau's data show that women now make up 60.5 percent of accountants and auditors, up from 39 percent in 1983, 44.1 percent in 1985 and 52.1 percent in 1995.

Observers cite several reasons for the surge in female accountants. First, many women see accounting as a flexible field that allows for both a meaningful career and time for a family.

Bonnie Houldsworth, a principal in the Henderson accounting firm of Houldsworth, Russo & Co., said the perpetually high demand for accountants allows practitioners more control over the hours they work and the clients they take on.

"You could still have a really interesting job and not necessarily do it full-time," said Houldsworth, who began studying accounting in college in 1972 and finished in 1984, after taking time off with her children. "A lot of the women I interview today (for jobs) say they don't want to travel too much, or they want hours that are somewhat reasonable. A lot of other professions require many more hours."

A change in the nature of accounting also appeals to women. It's no longer mere numbers-tallying, Dutton said.

"The analytical aspect of the accounting profession over the last 20 years has been more attractive to women," she said. "It's not, 'Crunch this number here,' or, 'Prepare this report there.' There's a lot more personal interaction."

Chief financial officers today are not just making sure books and records are accurate and fairly stated, Dutton added. They're responsible for directing the overall fiscal health of a business.

"You have to really understand what's happening in that particular company," she said. "You have to interact with operations, marketing, sales and even research and development and put all those pieces together. You can't just live inside statistics."

Nancy Baliga, an associate professor of economics and accounting at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., said women began taking introductory accounting classes in larger numbers in the 1970s and found the work appealing.

"Women enjoy the accounting courses they take, and they know there are great opportunities for them when they come out of a program," said Baliga, who served on the Work Life and Women's Initiatives Committee of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

The earliest pioneers weren't struggling with work-life balance alone.

Houldsworth said the hardest aspect of joining the profession ahead of many other women was contending with a shortage of female mentors.

For Dutton, it was finding equal footing among male peers.

"The key issue we faced early on was the credibility of our presence -- making sure that they valued our input in the same way they valued the input of other professionals," she said. "It had to do with making sure people were hearing what we said rather than focusing on what we looked like."

Even as they've come to dominate accounting and auditing, women in the field still lag in pay. Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that women accountants earn 74.5 percent of their male peers -- $757 a week for women and $1,016 for men.

"The number of women in high positions is still pretty limited, and there's definitely still a glass ceiling that's hard to get through," Houldsworth said. "Unfortunately, that probably has kept salaries (for women) down. I have friends in the industry who tell me it doesn't matter how many hours they work and how good they are -- they really feel like it's tough to get to the next level. Some of it is relationship-based. It's about who people relate to, and sometimes people relate to their own gender better. I don't think it's deliberate by any means. It's just a comfort that people sometimes feel with others who are like themselves."

But Dutton attributed the salary disparity partly to the career choices women accountants have made.

Women are more likely than men to take a break from working to have and raise children, Dutton said. And because they have families, she said, women are also more likely to eschew higher-level, time- and travel-intensive positions with large, publicly traded companies in favor of jobs with smaller firms that offer fewer and more flexible hours. The lack of women at or near the top of major accounting firms also comes in part from the fact that women haven't dominated the profession long enough to have captured the highest positions, she said.

"In most cases, men run their careers straight through, with no down time, and that makes it easier for them to get (top jobs)," Dutton said. "Women, unless they decide against having a family, will get there more slowly. For women who do continue their careers all the way through, they can be at a salary equal to a male partner in a large CPA firm."

Women accountants said they expect their gender to continue to make strides toward the corner office. But some women added that the industry still has work to do in enabling women to advance.

Baldiga, who left an accounting practice for academia after she had children and struggled with balancing her job and family life, said several obstacles remain for women in the field.

The profession is hours-driven, which means success comes most often to those who can put in the most time, she said.

"Firms need to address how that kind of system can work for women who want to work less than a full complement of hours," Baldiga said.

In addition, Baldiga said firms need to be more aggressive about including women in leadership-development programs, training and networking opportunities.

"Women have the interpersonal and professional skills. They just need access to (leadership) opportunities," Baldiga said. "Firms are realizing succession will rely on having women at senior levels, and they're understanding they need to get women into those positions."