Could we have a reverse wage gap on our hands? A report has found that in 2015, the salaries of the female CEOs of the 100 largest public companies in the U.S. were significantly higher than the salaries of their male counterparts.
Equilar, the compensation firm that created the study, put together a list of the top 100 American companies in terms of revenue, and found that female CEOs in this group earned an annual average of $22.7 million, while male CEOs were paid an average of $14.9 million, according to Fortune.
Equilar’s theory also proves true when you look at the median earnings, according to TIME magazine. Female CEOs earned a median of $20 million in 2015, compared to $14.5 million for the entire group.
But don’t get too excited yet, ladies. It’s important to note that the small number of female CEOs analyzed in the study greatly affected the results. Of the 100 companies included in the study, only eight of them had female CEOs, according to Equilar. So while the women’s average salary comes from eight women, the men’s average comes from 93 male CEOs (one of the companies has two CEOs).
Safra Catz, who tied with her co-CEO Mark Hurd for the highest-ranking salary on the list, earned $53.2 million last year, which also significantly brought up the average of the women’s salaries, Fortune reports.
While its super encouraging to see an increasing number of women working their way onto these lists, they still only made up 7.9 percent of the CEOs in Equilar’s study. This data shows that, although there has been progress, we have a long way to go before achieving gender parity in the business sector.