Dive Brief:
- Female CFOs and CEOs at Standard & Poor’s 500 companies will outearn their male counterparts this year, bagging at least 5% more in median compensation compared with top male executives, the Conference Board said Monday.
- At the same time, women lag far behind men in rising to the No. 1 role at big companies, filling just 7.9% of CEO positions among S&P firms, the Conference Board said in a report co-written by FW Cook and ESGAUGE. Women held 6.4% of the top jobs in 2020.
- “Since women remain underrepresented in CEO roles, companies are likely offering more competitive compensation packages to attract and retain female leadership,” said Matteo Tonello, the Conference Board’s head of TCB benchmarking and analytics. “These higher pay packages reflect both efforts to improve diversity at the executive level and the recognition that such talent is scarce.”
Dive Insight:
Women CEOs at S&P 500 companies will earn $16.5 million in median compensation compared with $15.6 million for top male executives for a 5.37% advantage, according to Conference Board data. Women CFOs at S&P 500 companies will earn on median $5.8 million, or 8.4% more than the $5.35 million compensation for men.
Women have made gains in recent decades but are far from attaining parity in the workplace, McKinsey said last month in a report. They lag men in opportunities at all levels of the corporate pecking order, from entry level, to senior manager to the C-suite.
Although women fill 29% of C-suite positions compared with just 17% in 2015, they are less likely than men to gain an entry-level job and to attain their first promotion to a manager role, McKinsey said after surveying 281 organizations employing more than 10 million people for an annual report on women in the workplace.
More broadly, progress by women in wage gains, labor force participation and in rising to the upper tier of management has stalled in recent years, according to the Pew Research Center. “Large gender gaps persist at the top levels of government and business leadership,” Pew said.
Only 11% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women CEOs, Pew said, adding that Fortune 500 boards are just 30% female.
Among the 10 highest-paying U.S. occupations — ranging from physicians and dentists to lawyers and airline pilots — women have increased their presence to 35% last year from 13% in 1980, Pew said in its February report.
Yet U.S. employers have made limited progress during the past two decades in aligning average earnings among women and men, according to Pew.
U.S. women in 2022 earned just 82 cents for every dollar men earned, only 2 cents more than in 2002, Pew said.
Among Russell 3000 companies, female CEOs gained $6.7 million in median compensation compared with $6.1 million for their male counterparts, the Conference Board said. Still, women CEOs lead only 6.9% of Russell 3000 companies.
“The CEO position is extremely visible, and compensation arrangements for public companies are disclosed in detail,” FW Cook Managing Director Dana Etra said in an email response to questions.
“Boards are acutely aware of the disclosure implications, as well as the message that pay arrangements send externally,” she said. “The sensitivity around the broader gender pay gap and potential perception of such contributes to boards’ decision making around female executives’ pay.”
Women have led men in median CEO pay since 2018, with the exception of 2023, when they made about $10,000 less, the Conference Board said. Since 2018 their pay advantage has narrowed to 5.37% from 8.15%, according to the Conference Board.
The trend of higher pay for women CEOs will probably continue, according to analysts at the Conference Board and FW Cook.
“The trend is likely to continue in the immediate future,” Etra said, while predicting that “as the talent pipeline evens out, the compensation will as well.”