A recent CEO Pay Survey finds that a wage gap exists between male and female CEOs. The latest findings from The Corporate Library’s CEO Pay Survey: CEO Pay 2008, found that not only are female CEO pay packages (including bonuses, stock options, etc.) only about 85% of male CEOs’ total pay packages, but female CEOs of the largest companies in the survey make less than two thirds of what is paid to their male counterparts.
According to BusinessWeek, the study’s authors explained that their findings were affected by the higher number of male CEOs in the survey (only 3% of those surveyed were women) and the trend that men often have longer tenures than women. Also, the survey’s authors noted successful leadership skills are often ascribed more to male leaders than to female leaders. Study author, Clara Kulich, told BusinessWeek that “a lot of research shows [men receive] a lot of internal attributions–people think that he must be responsible for increasing or decreasing” company performance. She added, “with a female manager, [boards are] more prone to use external situations, economic situations” to evaluate a CEO and company’s performance.
