One more gap in pay between men and
women
The Globe and Mail -
WALLACE IMMEN
August
15, 2008
Add one more gap to the paycheques
between men and women in the top management roles: When their companies
flourish, male executives see their bonuses soar - but women in equivalent roles
get practically no bump-up, a new British study has found.
"This is a very discouraging finding,"
said Clara Kulich, a professor at the
"Even when women make it through the
glass ceiling, this indicates there is still an indifference to their
achievements," she said.
The study looked at total pay earned by
96 male and the same number of female executives at equivalent levels of
responsibility in British companies in 1998 to 2006.
Their base salaries were not that far
apart: In a typical year, men received an average annual £150,000, plus a bonus
of 40 per cent of that amount. Women were paid an average of £140,000 and a
35-per-cent bonus.
But those differences widened
significantly when companies enjoyed significant increases in stock price and
profits: Male executives doubled, and in some cases, tripled, their performance
bonuses. Female executives, meanwhile, received an average bonus increase of
just 4 per cent, the study found.
Over all, men leading top-performing
companies took home 19 per cent more compensation than women achieving the same
results.
If they don't profit as much in good
times, they also don't suffer as much in bad: Companies that badly
underperformed cut the bonuses of their male executives by as much as half,
while women's remained about the same.
Still, "the fact that female executives
are neither rewarded nor punished for their work can be seen as an indicator of
a more generalized organizational apathy and indifference toward women in
management," Prof. Kulich says. Women may not be seen as fully responsible for
the company results because they are perceived to lack the same ability as men
to influence company performance, she concluded.
The gender discrepancy hasn't shown up
as strongly in Canada, in part because the country counts just 31 women in
C-suite roles, under 7 per cent of all of the most senior management jobs, says
Alan Zelnicker, Toronoto-based principal of recruiter Rosenzweig & Co., which
does an annual survey.
The company hasn't directly compared
bonuses of men and women executives in