The Case for Women CEOs (and the Pay Gap Makes Them a Real Deal) - Building Gender Balanced Business

• As much less as the average woman makes than a man, it’s a lot better than the gender gap among CEOs, and that makes Linda Lowen mad (us, too).

• Lowen, an About.com writer for the online information service’s Women’s Issues pages, crunched the numbers, like you can find elsewhere on this site, and found that the average female CEO earns about a third of what a male CEO gets.

• Her numbers, which are somewhat grimmer than most similar but broader assessments, were based on Forbes’s list of  America’s Top-Paid Female CEOs for Fall 2009. For that list only, the average woman earned $3.9 million, while the much larger number of top male CEOs averaged $11.9 million.

• Lowen cited Forbes on one smoking gun: “Lynn Elsenhans, the only woman running a big oil company, was paid $2.2 million last year by $37 billion refiner Sunoco….Bruce Smith, head of refining concern Tesoro…which had sales of $20 billion in 2008, took home $18.6….”

• And it just doesn’t make sense, Lowen explains, because by and large the women are better CEOs. “[W]hether by nature, nurture or coincidence, women leaders appear to genuinely care about the interests and opinions of those around them. And that sincere expression of care translates to employees feeling more valued, more understood, and more supported.”

• Lowen notes that About.com itself and its parent company, The New York Times Co., both have women as CEOs.

• Lesser paid that they might be, Lowen is grateful and inspired by the women who have made CEO, writing of such women’s example: ‘[W]hen we see her run by, the sole female in a pack of [men], she breaks the rules as easily a she breaks a sweat. She challenges women as much as men as she takes the lead, and it’s up to the rest of us to match her pace and keep that baton moving down the line.”

“Linda Lowen’s About.com column as Women’s Issues commentator”: http://womensissues.about.com/b/2009/09/28/female-ceos-earn-less-than-men-but-inspire-more.htm