There are 300 chief executives listed in The Financial Review today as Australia’s highest paid bosses for 2014.
Can you guess how many of them are women? Eleven. Out of 300. It’s an improvement on last year when there were only nine but women still only make up 3.6% of our top earning corporates.
In dollar terms it represents an extraordinary gap between men and women. The average take home salary for the executives listed is $2,875,878. Using that average figure, the 289 men on the list take home a little more than $831 million whilst the 11 women earn a combined $31million. The wage gap between men and women on this list is $800million. That is almost a billion dollars and dwarfs the 18.2% pay gap that exists between men and women in Australia.
The top 10 highest paid bosses all took home more than $9 million and there is just one woman among them, Gail Kelly. Next year with Kelly’s retirement from Westpac it seems unlikely a woman will make the top 10.
David Gyngell, Robert Thomson, Nicholas Moore , Sam Walsh, Richard Godyer and Michael Smith are among the familiar names with pay packets ranging from $9.4million to $19.59million. It’s worth noting that the highest paid executive in Australia is Channel 9’s David Gyngell who took home $19.59 million this year. Remember that famous tussle he was involved in earlier this year? It is difficult to imagine mere mortals emerging from such a public altercation with their professional integrity entirely unscathed yet it obviously hasn’t hampered Gyngell.
Congratulations to the 11 female executives on the list. We hope next year the list be a lot longer.
1. Gail Kelly
2. Nerida Caesar
3. Chua ock Loong
4. Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz
5. Kerrie Mather
6. Katie Page
7. Gill Winckler
8. Julie-Ann Kerin
9. Launa Inman
10. Jackie Fairley
11. Elizabeth Gaines