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The Guardian: Women bosses left behind by men’s pay

EXTRACT: Just behind Dame Marjorie on the list of female executives came Linda Cook at Shell, who was paid £1.9m in 2006. Ms Cook runs the gas and power division at the Anglo-Dutch oil group. An American who has been with Shell since leaving the University of Kansas, she is also a non-executive director of the aircraft manufacturer Boeing.

THE ARTICLE

Terry Macalister
Wednesday August 29, 2007

The pay gap between men and women is as wide in the boardroom as it is lower down the company, reinforcing the glass ceiling barring equal opportunities.

The only two women heading any of Britain’s top 100 companies saw their total salary last year lag 75% and 25% behind the average paid to their male counterparts, according to the Guardian pay survey. There were 16 women executives at the top level last year – four more than 12 months earlier but still a tiny fraction of a total of 527.

The Equal Opportunities Commission said the figures were “shocking” and emphasised the need for changes in flexible working and other issues to ensure everyone had a chance to reach the top.

Dame Marjorie Scardino was the highest paid female, earning £2.1m last year as chief executive of Pearson, but this was still 25% below the average for FTSE 100 bosses. Dame Marjorie, whose company publishes the Financial Times, was in the bottom half of the pay league but did raise her earnings from the £1.8m the year before when her star had waned because of a drooping share price.

The only other woman chief executive in the list was Dorothy Thompson, pictured, who runs Drax, the largest coal-fired power station in western Europe. Her salary was £731,800, compared with an average for FTSE 100 bosses of nearly £2.9m, over a period when her business had been environmentally controversial but profitable. Cynthia Carroll’s appointment as head of FTSE 100 mining group AngloAmerican was too late for her to make the list.

The seventh best paid female executive is another Pearson director, Rona Fairhead, who was promoted by Dame Marjorie to chief executive of the Financial Times Group in June last year. Ms Fairhead, a law graduate, earned a total salary of just under £1.1m in 2006.

Just behind Dame Marjorie on the list of female executives came Linda Cook at Shell, who was paid £1.9m in 2006. Ms Cook runs the gas and power division at the Anglo-Dutch oil group. An American who has been with Shell since leaving the University of Kansas, she is also a non-executive director of the aircraft manufacturer Boeing.

The Equal Opportunities Commission said the gap between executive pay for women and male counterparts came alongside a finding that women’s hourly pay was 17% lower than men’s. “We calculated it would take 65 years for there to be equality in the boardroom and these latest [Guardian] figures confirm this. It is shocking and just shows the painfully slow process towards equality,” said Caroline Slocock, chief executive of the EOC.

Women appear to be doing better in the non-executive stakes, with four of them among the relatively small total of 16 men and women who have positions on three or more FTSE 100 boards.

A newcomer to the best paid females of top 100 companies is Scottish accountant Jann Brown, who last year was made finance director of oil group Cairn Energy and earned £1.7m.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2157948,00.html

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