Surprise! Women trump men on CEO pay

Matt Krantz | USA TODAY

What glass ceiling? The gender gap appears to be closed: At least when it comes to CEO pay.

So far, 21 of the 22 current female CEOs in the Standard & Poor's 500 have reported their latest compensation, including Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Marissa Mayer, defense contractor Lockheed Martin's (LMT) Marillyn Hewson and Carol Meyrowitz, CEO of retailer TJX (TJX), and they were paid an average of $18.8 million during their latest fiscal years, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Capital IQ and Bespoke Investment Group. That far exceeds the average $12.7 million paid to the 455 current male CEOs in the S&P 500 that have reported compensation data for the same time period.

The compensation awarded to female CEOs, on average, also outstrips the $14.3 million average paid to all the CEOs of the 100 largest publicly held companies that had reported through early April, according to pay tracker Equilar and compensation consultant Towers Watson.

Now's the time investors pay particularly close attention to what they're paying the CEO as corporate filings — called proxy statements — are in from nearly all S&P 500 companies. Women have a long way to go to match or even rival men in the CEO office in terms of numbers, but they've made strong strides in size of pay. Total pay for this analysis was calculated using the Securities and Exchange Commission's guidelines, which includes salary and the present value of options and stock grants.

The only current S&P 500 female missing from the analysis is Heather Bresch, CEO of the drugmaker Mylan (MYL) since October 2007. 2014 compensation data were not available. Safra Ada Catz's pay as co-president of Oracle was included in this analysis because she was named co-CEO after the end of the technology company's fiscal year.

The highest paid female CEO appeared toward the end of the filing reporting season — late Wednesday to be exact. Yahoo CEO Mayer's $42 million paycheck ranks her seventh among the most highly paid current CEOs of the year, just behind Philippe Dauman, CEO of Viacom (VIAB) with a total reported pay package worth $44.3 million. Until Mayer's 69% raise in 2014, the highest paid current female CEO was Catz, and the highest paid current female CEO who was also CEO in the latest fiscal year was Hewson.

It's been a great year financially for CEOs. And that's especially true for the women who have risen to the top of the corporate ladder.