Paige Churchman wrote about the “Top Women” lists recently published by Fortune and Forbes in a blog post at theglasshammer.com. She noted that the lists are dissimilar both in the names they include and the compensation numbers they report explaining that these lists are “both art and science.”

While we all may not be inclined to “cry a river” for Meg Whitman (who, as Churchman points out, either made $120.4 million according to Forbes or only $11.9 million according to Fortune), we should be concerned about the persistent gender wage gap even for those women who are household names.  When they are underpaid relative to their male colleauges or counterparts, it hurts all of us.

Churchman writes:

The national average for women in all professions is nearly 78 cents to the dollar of men. That’s the closest women have ever come to matching the male dollar. It’s up from 77 cents last year and 74 cents ten years ago, a far sight better than in the sixties and seventies when the number had a tough time breaking 59 cents. (Women’s Earnings as a Percentage of Men’s, 1951-2007) Even with her one-time million-dollar package, Ms. Whitman makes not quite 63 cents to the highest-paid male executive’s dollar. (The top-paid male executive was Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who made $193 million in 2007.)…Forbes’s top ten men made no less than $72 million, compared with its top ten women’s $12 million─17 to 20 cents to the dollar of the top ten men.

She then cites several reasons for the gender wage gap offered by various reseachers. Although the explanations are myriad (and some clearly ridiculous) they are worth reading.   While the gender wage gap is completely outside of our control on a macro basis, it’s good to remember that we need to pay attention to our compensation packages on an individual basis. More thoughts about this in a post to appear on Thursday.

TAGS: compensation. gender wage gap, economic power, Forbes, Fortune, Meg Whitman, Top Women in Business