America's Highest-Paid Female CEOs - (only 13 women CEOs in the 500 largest companies)

America's Highest-Paid Female CEOs
Matt Kirdahy, 07.28.08,
5:30 PM ET

www.forbes.com

Top-dog pay at America's 500 largest companies collectively
decreased last year for the first time since 2002, although the 13
female chief executives in that club are feeling rather flush.

After clocking a juicy 38% collective pay increase in 2006, CEOs of
the 500 largest companies in the U.S.--as measured by a composite
ranking of sales, profits, assets and market value--saw their
compensation dwindle an average 15% in 2007. (Chalk up much of that
volatility to performance-based compensation packages tied to flagging
earnings and share prices.) Meanwhile, those lucky 13 saw their pay
jump an average 27%.

Not that the pay gap between male and (the few) female CEOs doesn't
persist. The average take, including salary and bonuses, for all 500
CEOs was $12.8 million--double the female average of $6.5 million.

In Pictures: America's Highest-Paid Female CEOs

In Pictures: America's Top-Paid CEOs

Indra Nooyi surely isn't grousing about her paycheck. Topping the list of highest-paid female CEOs, the PepsiCo
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chief took home $12.7 million (including $4.5 million in bonus pay),
putting her at No. 139 out of 500 chiefs overall. The Indian-born exec
ranked a bit higher on the Forbes list of the most powerful women in the world, at No. 5.

Impressive as that sounds, Nooyi's total compensation was just one-fourteenth that of the highest-paid man on the list, Oracle's
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Larry Ellison, who took home a modest $1 million in salary but realized
$182 million from the exercise of vested stock options last year.

Second on the list of highest-paid female CEOs is Avon Products'
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) Andrea Jung, who banked $4.3 million in salary and bonus and received a total compensation of $12 million. Xerox
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) Chief Anne Mulcahy came in third with total comp of $11 million, followed by Susan Ivey ($7.2 million) of cig-maker Reynolds American
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) and Western Union's
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) Christina Gold ($5.7 million).

Compensation experts won't hazard a guess as to when, if ever, that
pay gap between male and female CEOs will close. They do, however,
suggest that the ranks of female chief execs will continue to expand as
more large companies look to boost diversity among senior-level
management.

In one study of the largest companies (by sales), Catalyst, a
nonprofit devoted to encouraging diversity in the workplace, found that
the percentage of women holding corporate officer positions has
increased to 15% from 12% in 2000. That means more women will be in a
position to negotiate bigger paydays, says Mike Hodak, founder of
management consulting firm Hodak Value Advisors.

"Boards are typically going to pay a premium for what they consider
to be a brand name," says Hodak. "More and more women have a name in
the world's largest companies. We're starting to see the benefits of
them realizing that."

But it's not just a brand that big companies are looking for. "Often
times they feel that women can bring that out-of-the-box thinking to
the leadership role," says Hugh Shields, founding principal at C-level
career consultancy Shields Meneley Partners. "They might have the
relationship skills to drive a new culture and strategy through an
organization."

Next step: translating those skills into serious scratch.