Backlash on Women

“Women are more likely to advocate for opportunity for themselves than for money, even when they’ve accomplished so much,” said M.J. Tocci, director of the Heinz Negotiation Academy for Women at Carnegie Mellon University. “That’s not surprising given the backlash women can get when they seek higher pay. Even people who believe women deserve what they’re asking for often peg them as selfish and not likable, which isn’t the reaction men get when they demand more.”

Overall, women who work full time in the U.S. earned an average 77 cents for every dollar paid to men in 2011, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The variance can be partly explained by differences in occupation, experience, and skill.

For women at the highest rungs of the corporate ladder, who were paid 82 cents for every dollar of their male counterparts in the S&P 500 last year, levels of experience and skill are more comparable with the men.

A 2010 study by Catalyst found that after controlling for career aspirations, parental status, years of experience, industry, and other variables, male graduates are more likely to be assigned jobs of higher rank and responsibility and earn, on average, $4,600 more than women in their first post-MBA jobs. The study involved 9,927 graduates of business schools in the North America, Europe and Asia.

Among women paid on par or more than men in their industry are executives at the top of the S&P 500 ranking.

Last year Mayer, 38, was recruited from Google Inc., where she’d been a top executive, to become CEO of Yahoo and help turn around the struggling Internet pioneer. She got total compensation of $36.6 million and also holds Yahoo stock valued at about $66 million. By comparison, Jeffrey Weiner, 43, who’s been chief of LinkedIn Corp. since 2009, received $1.2 million; his stake in LinkedIn is worth more than $40 million.

Equal Pay

Eliminating the pay gap may depend on women gaining a more equal share of senior executive jobs. No S&P 500 company listed more than three women among their five highest-paid executives last year. Four of them -- Frontier Communications, Aetna Inc., Avon Products Inc. and International Paper Co. –- had three and 21 had two.

Oracle CFO Catz, the top S&P 500 female earner, makes more than many CEOs, including Steve Ballmer at Microsoft Corp., the data show. Still, her compensation is about half that of the top male earner: Larry Ellison, her boss at software maker Oracle.