The year 2015 saw a decrease in the number of female Chief Financial Officers (CFO) in S&P 500 companies, however, according to a study released by the Associated Press (AP) and Equilar on Dec. 18, the remaining female chiefs earned a little bit more than their male counterparts in 2015.
This welcome news comes at a time when the issue on gender wage gap is discussed even more openly than before since Hollywood celebrities joined in the discussion and even led to "The Hunger Games" actress, Jennifer Lawrence to pen an essay about the issue, earning the support of not only female celebrities but her male actor counterparts as well.
So what makes the results of the study something to celebrate about? It all has to do with the percentage of female CFOs and their earnings when compared to the percentage and earnings of their male counterparts.
Equilar's most recent findings show that despite the fact that women only make up 11.6 percent of the total number of CFOs in S&P 500 companies, those women who hold the CFO position earned a median pay of $3.32 million in the last year whereas the male counterparts who make up 88.4 percent of the CFO population earned a median pay of $3.3 million.
The sad fact is that, from the 25 female CFOs in 2014, the number declined to 21 female CFOs in 2015, which, in spite of the good news that the gender wage gap may have been bridged in the world of Corporate Finance in 2015, the field may still be troubled with the issue of representation.
In a way, Equilar's study is still good news because it showed that at least one field has taken up the issue on gender wage gap seriously enough to achieve such results.
Equilar is a California-based company that deals in presenting unbiased information with regard to executive compensation packages of publicly traded companies and nonprofit organizations for use as benchmarking data and governance solutions.
