Women CEOs earned big bucks last year, but there’s still very few of them running the world’s largest companies.
The median pay for a female CEO was $13.1 million last year, up 9% from 2015, according to an analysis by executive data firm Equilar and The Associated Press. By comparison, male CEOs earned $11.4 million, also up 9%.
But the number of women in CEO roles has barely budged. Just 6% of the top paid CEOs in the U.S. last year were women, according to the Equilar and AP analysis, a slight increase from about 5% in 2015 and 2014.
The highest paid woman was Virginia Rometty of International Business Machines Corp., bumping out Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer from the top spot. Rometty earned $32.3 million last year from the technology company, a 63% jump from the year before, mainly due to $12.1 million in stock option awards she didn’t receive in 2015.
Mayer earned $27.4 million last year, making her the second-highest paid woman. But she may be out of a job after Yahoo Inc. completes the sale of its websites and email services to Verizon Wireless in June. She’s not expected to join Verizon, and Yahoo has said Mayer will receive a $23 million severance package if she departs.
Janice Ellig, the co-CEO of executive search firm Chadick Ellig, says “unconscious bias” in the workplace is keeping women from getting opportunities that will put them on track to for top roles.
Companies need to “start recognizing that gender inequality exists,” say Ellig, who is also chairperson of the Women’s Forum of New York.
“If you don’t recognize a problem, you can’t solve a problem,” she says.
