By Jena McGregor

In Ceo Pay, Another Gender Gap

With all the hubbub over high CEO pay, there's a group of chief executives who might be able to argue that theirs is below average: women. A study of 3,242 North American companies by the Corporate Library, a governance researcher, found that female CEOs' median total compensation is roughly 85% of male CEOs'. The median package—salary, cash bonuses, perks, stock option profits, and other realized equity—comes to $2 million-plus for men, vs. $1.75 million for women. The study took into account company size, performance, and industry, but none of those variables were enough to explain the gap. Indeed, at the biggest companies, female CEOs get just 61% of what male CEOs make in median actual compensation. Senior research associate Paul Hodgson speculated that the findings may have been affected by the small number of women CEOs (under 3%) in the study's sample.