Even at the top, women execs are paid less than men

NEW YORK – Even the few women who have managed to advance to the C-suite don't get equal pay.

Last year, of the five best-paid executives at each of the Standard & Poor's 500 index companies, 198 were women, or 8 percent of the total. Those high-achievers on average earned $5.3 million, 18 percent less than men, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Four decades after substantial numbers of women began entering management ranks, only a handful have reached the echelons that earn the biggest compensation.

Even after graduating from the same business schools, women tend to start out at lower salaries than men and many don't catch up later in their careers.

Female executives say they can be less demanding than men when it comes to pay, partly out of fear of being labeled as overly aggressive and self-centered.

"I was always focused on negotiating for my team but never as good at negotiating for myself," said Dawn Lepore, former chief executive officer at Drugstore.com and vice chairman of Charles Schwab.

"When I went to Drugstore.com, I thought, 'This is a great opportunity and rather than demand a lot upfront, I'm going to do a great job and then I'll get rewarded,' " said Lepore, now a director at AOL and TJX. "I didn't want to be greedy, or viewed as out for myself. Maybe women are more collaborative."

While both got higher compensation than some peers, their examples are more the exception than the rule.

Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, who advises women in her bestselling book "Lean In" not to squelch their ambitions, notes that women's lack of sponsors in their workplaces keeps them from asking for both stretch assignments and raises.

Women are such a rarity in top jobs — about 20 S&P 500 CEOs — that they may not want to stand out more by being tough on pay, according to Pat Cook, president of boutique executive search firm Cook & Co. in Bronxville, N.Y.

"Women tend to start out their careers getting paid less, and that gap often never gets made up, even at the most senior levels," Cook said. "Plus women settle more frequently than men for what they're offered."

The scarcity of female CEOs explains in part the S&P 500 gender gap. The small pool brings the average compensation down among women in the C-suite because chief executives tend to command the highest pay, said Ilene Lang, president of Catalyst, a New York-based research and advocacy group for women executives.