Female CEOs saw ranks dwindle in 2020 as median pay for women chiefs slipped

Most of the women running the biggest US companies saw their pay increase last year, even as the pandemic hammered the economy and many of their businesses.

Despite those gains, however, the median pay for female chief executives actually fell in 2020. Already a small group, they saw several high-profile women leave their ranks last year. That means changes in pay for only a few helped skew the overall figures, highlighting just how slow diversity has been to catch on in Corporate America’s corner offices. Of the 342 CEOs in the AP’s and Equilar’s compensation survey of S&P 500 companies, only 16 were women. That’s down from 20 a year earlier, as CEOs like IBM’s Virginia Rometty left their posts. The survey includes only CEOs who have served at least two full fiscal years at their companies, in order to avoid the distortions of big sign-on bonuses. The companies must have filed proxy statements between Jan. 1 and April 30.