A recent survey by The Corporate Library found that while females receive higher base salaries than their male counterparts, when cash bonuses, perks, and stock compensation is factored in, female CEOs only make 85 percent of the pay packages male CEOs bring in.
The median actual compensation for females is $1,746,000 compared to $2,049,000 male pay packages. Females of larger corporations fair worse as their earning power is less than two thirds of male CEOs.
The survey adjusted pay for size, performance, and industry, but none of these factors distinguished the reason for the discrepancies. Tenure did not lend a solution to the differential in pay.
“Perhaps it is the number of female CEOs,” speculated Senior Research Associate Paul Hodgson, co-author of the report. “Less than 3 percent of CEOs were women, so there were nearly 33 times as many male CEOs as there were female CEOs. This is a shockingly low number in any major Western economy, but the small number of women in the sample – only 80 – may be affecting the findings.”
While more than 15 percent of women CEOs lead financial services companies, compared to 12 percent of male CEOs, the distribution of industries for female CEOs was not different enough from male CEOs to have significant or consistent effect, according to the report.