Just because you break the glass ceiling in title, still doesn’t mean the pay is gender equal.
Bloomberg ranked the Top 50 Trade Group CEO paychecks and only eight women made the list. Those eight women earned an average of $1.31 million in the most recent tax year. Which sounds good, until you hear that the 42 men who rounded out the list earned, on average, $1.93 million. In other words, women CEOs made about 68 cents for every dollar made by male counterparts, and about $600,000 less than their male counterparts.
“It seems like men and women would have equal lobbying ability,” John Challenger of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said, “I can’t see why there’d be any difference in pay. The most obvious answer is that it’s discrimination.”
Linda Lipsen of the American Association for Justice, told Bloomberg that “women should make up at least half of this list.”
Of course, the question isn’t whether the men deserve the salaries they’re earning. Bloomberg points out that Thomas Donohue leads “the largest, most active, and most influential trade organization in the world” at The Chamber of Commerce and he tops the Top 50 list with $4.95 million banked in the most recent tax year. No, the question is why are only eight women included in a list of 50? Challenger is right in saying that men and women have equal lobbying ability. When will lobbying boards realize that this equal ability should translate into equal pay and compensation?
Bloomberg ranked the groups’ influence by the total amount of time they spent lobbying in the capital during President Obama’s first term.
Ali Vitali is MS NOW's senior congressional correspondent and the host of "Way Too Early." She is the author of "Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House … Yet."