Women Helping Women Pays Off

Posted In: Mentors / Networking
Posted On: 6/9/2014


Let's all go out there and see whom we can bring with us up the corporate ladder!

This Friday, I am thrilled to be the closing speaker for the Colorado Technology Association’s Women in Technology event in Denver.  As I was reviewing my notes for the speech, I came across a recent article in the New York Times about salaries of women executives versus men.  It will probably come as no surprise to you that just 11 of the 200 highest paid chief executives in the U.S. are women. The exciting statistic for the 500 gals that will be in my audience on Friday is that women really hold their own in the tech field. That’s right, “the technology industry has the most women—Ms. Mayer, Virginia M. Rometty of IBM and Megan Whitman of Hewlett-Packard.  Their median pay, $17.6MM, is more than that of the male tech chiefs, who earn $15.9MM.”   Of course Ms. Mayer is Melissa Mayer of Yahoo who made about $25MM in 2013.  Not making the list due to non-CEO titles, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg made $16MM, Oracle’s Safra Catz brought home $43MM and Apple’s new retail chief, Angela Ahrendts, has an equity package before salary and bonus of $68.5MM. Not bad, ladies. But enough lifestyles of the rich and famous!  There was one piece of information in the article that I found to be important for the rest of us who will most likely never get a check with six zeroes before the decimal point... “Another indication that gender plays a role in executive pay is that female executives earn up to 20 percent more in companies where a woman is the chief executive or heads the board than in similar companies led by men, according to a paper by Linda A. Bell, an economics professor who is now provost and dean of the faculty at Barnard College. Companies led by women also have more women as senior executives." “The help of women by women is an important factor in the career outcomes of women,” Ms. Bell wrote. This makes me want to stand up and cheer! Yes! Women helping women succeed! Let’s all go out there and see whom we can bring with us up the corporate ladder.  And if you are on a rung closer to the bottom than the top, look for companies that have women in senior positions. We can do this!