Though only 4.2 percent of Fortune 500 companies are run by women, female CEOs have been outearning their male counterparts for six out of the last seven years.
The stats
There is approximately one female CEO for every 20 male CEOs, making these women an elite group.
Out of the 21 women running Fortune 500 companies, Meg Whitman of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, Virginia Rometty of International Business Machines Corp, and Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, Inc. topped The Wall Street Journal’s list of the highest-paid female CEOs in 2016.
As a group, women in charge of Fortune 500s made substantially more than men in their field. Half of the female CEOs earned at least $13.8 million, compared with the median of $11.6 million for men.
The journey to the top of a Fortune 500 company is not easy for anyone, but it takes an especially long time for women. Research from the Harvard Business Review shows that it typically takes men 15 years to climb to a CEO position, while it takes women about double that time.
Though the difference can be attributed to many factors, it’s clear that female Fortune 500 CEOs have a much longer process to endure as they ascend the ranks of their companies.
Being a minority at the top
The three top-paid female CEOs — Whitman, Rometty and Nooyi — have each spoken about being powerful women in a male-dominated industry.
Whitman said in a Forbes article that she found her stride while working for Disney in the 1980s.
“I had to learn to stand up for myself. It was a male-oriented culture,” Whitman wrote. “I had thought that unless I say something brilliant, I shouldn’t say anything. Three-quarters of the other people were saying stupid stuff.”
Though Whitman became a CEO by hopping from company to company, Rometty started at IBM as a systems engineer in 1981. She stayed with IBM for more than 30 years, working her way up the ranks until she became the president and CEO in 2012.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Rometty discussed how being a woman plays into her role as CEO of IBM.
“I never felt the most important thing was that I was a woman, that wasn’t it,” Rometty said. “It was about being and doing the right things as CEO for IBM.”
Rometty, along with many other women, feels that being a woman is not the defining thing about her. It is something that shapes her experience, but it isn’t something that changes her role as a CEO.
On the other hand, Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo, said that being a woman has made her job more difficult at times. Nooyi expressed frustrations with balancing her work and family roles in a conversation with Atlantic Media owner David Bradley.
“You know, stay-at-home mothering was a full-time job,” Nooyi said. “Being a CEO for a company is three full-time jobs rolled into one. How can you do justice to all? You can’t.”
Takeaway
Though being a woman in a male-dominated field can be intimidating and frustrating at times, these female CEOs don’t let anyone stop them from doing incredible work.
Hopefully in the next few years, we see even more women rise to the top of Fortune 500 companies.
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