THE gender pay gap has shown up in seemingly every job there is: Tech workers. Scientists. Even male nurses make more than their female peers.

But in one occupation — one at the very tiptop of Corporate America — the median woman has consistently earned more than the median man. It’s the corner office of the country’s largest public companies: chief executives of S&P 500 corporations.

A new analysis of the largest public US companies by the Associated Press and Equilar, the executive pay and corporate governance research firm, found that the median female CEO made $13.1 million in 2016, compared with $11.4m for the median male CEO.

“I don’t think there’s any one definitive reason we can say this is happening,” said Dan Marcec, Equilar’s director of content. “It could just be a matter that these individuals happen to be running some of the more well-performing companies, and that’s reflected in their compensation.”

Whatever the reason, it’s been happening repeatedly — and for a while. Eric Hoffmann, vice president of information services for Farient Advisors, an executive compensation consulting firm, ran the data himself using a slightly different sample: S&P 500 companies in which the CEO was in the job for the full fiscal year. He found that in nine of the past 10 years, the median female CEO earned a bigger package than her male peer. “We’re getting some real consistency here,” he said.

Among the 25 highest paid CEOs in 2016, according to the AP/Equilar study, five of them were women, an over-representation when women make up less than 6 percent of all CEOs in the S&P 500, according to the nonprofit group Catalyst. (The AP/Equilar study looked at the 346 CEOs in the S&P 500 that have been in the job for at least two fiscal years and who filed their 2017 proxy statements by May 1. Twenty-one of them are women, and 325 are men.)

The highest paid female CEO, IBM’s Virginia Rometty, was paid $32.3m last year, thanks in part to a stock-option award IBM valued at $12.1m that was questioned by an influential proxy adviser and narrowly won shareholder approval. Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer came in second, with a package valued at $27.4m last year, followed by PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, at $25.2m. Two CEOs who have since left their jobs — Reynolds American’s Susan Cameron and Xerox’s Ursula Burns — fell at the median value for 2016, $13.1m.

So why, at least at the median, have female CEOs consistently made more than men?

There are plenty of theories but not a clear explanation. One possibility might be sample size, because there are so many fewer women than men in the job. But because these analyses look at median pay, rather than averages, an outlier shouldn’t sway the figures substantially, Hoffmann says. The small numbers, however, could lead to more volatility from one year to the next in what female CEOs make.

Rather, he thinks the most likely explanation is company size, as there is a distinct correlation between annual revenue and executive pay, and many of these women run larger companies.

“If I were to have to hang my hat on why women CEOs make more than their male counterparts, I’m going to hang 90 percent of that on the size of the companies the women are running,” he said. Thirteen of the 21 women in the study are among the 250 largest companies by revenue, and just four were ranked between 401 and 500.

Some academics have studied the issue. Lisa Leslie, a professor at New York University, looked at the highest-paid executives in S&P 1500 companies and found what might be called a “diversity premium,” in which women at the top earn more than men in these top-paid positions at big companies. The reason, Leslie told the Harvard Business Review, is that companies that have adopted organizational diversity goals — something common at the largest companies — are more likely to pay extra for high-potential women.

Other researchers at George Washington University have tried to answer the question, again without a clear answer. Also writing in HBR, James Bailey and Margaret Ormiston suggested it could be a supply-and-demand issue, or perhaps a move by companies to hire women to help them improve their image, offering them more incentive pay along with it.

“They’re suggesting, ‘We’ve done bad things in the past, and therefore by hiring a woman we should be forgiven and it helps makes up for what we’ve done,’ “ he said in an interview.

Another possibility, finally, has less to do with who’s running which company and more to do with the nature of executive compensation and how it’s disclosed.

Since 2006, the Securities and Exchange Commission has required companies to detail a lot of information about how CEOs are paid, meaning women and men — and the boards of directors who hire them — have plenty of information to go on when it comes to negotiating their pay.

That could bolster the argument that more information and transparency would help close the gender pay gap for women well below the CEO rank, too.

“You talk about workers in the general population, and if I’m a woman and I suspect I’m making a lot less than a corresponding male doing the same job, I can really only suspect that,” Hoffmann said. “But with executive pay, there’s so much transparency.”

Bloomberg-The Washington Post Service

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2017

Follow Dawn Business on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook for insights on business, finance and tech from Pakistan and across the world.

Opinion

Editorial

Judiciary’s SOS
Updated 28 Mar, 2024

Judiciary’s SOS

The ball is now in CJP Isa’s court, and he will feel pressure to take action.
Data protection
28 Mar, 2024

Data protection

WHAT do we want? Data protection laws. When do we want them? Immediately. Without delay, if we are to prevent ...
Selling humans
28 Mar, 2024

Selling humans

HUMAN traders feed off economic distress; they peddle promises of a better life to the impoverished who, mired in...
New terror wave
Updated 27 Mar, 2024

New terror wave

The time has come for decisive government action against militancy.
Development costs
27 Mar, 2024

Development costs

A HEFTY escalation of 30pc in the cost of ongoing federal development schemes is one of the many decisions where the...
Aitchison controversy
Updated 27 Mar, 2024

Aitchison controversy

It is hoped that higher authorities realise that politics and nepotism have no place in schools.