Women in the Fortune 1000

The data is out on what credentials you need to get the top job in corporate America; especially good to know for women who still lag far behind.

Recruitment specialists, Talentful, looked at 108 Fortune 1000 companies to identify differences between male and female CEOs.

They looked at all the female CEOs in the Fortune 1000 and compared them with an equivalent number of companies with male CEOs from the top of the list. What stands out from the research is how few female CEOs there are. In a list of 1000 CEOs, only 54 (5.4 %) are women. This is an improvement though; that’s three more female CEOs in the Fortune 1000 in three years.

In view of the ranking differences higher compensation isn’t as male-dominated: The Disney CEO Robert “Bob” Iger receives the most COMPENSATION overall, at $43,490,567 A YEAR. And the second best-paid overall is a woman, Safra Catz, of Oracle, with $40,943,812.

After Safra Catz, third and fourth highest earners are also women: Marissa Mayer, the Yahoo CEO ($35,981,107) and Mary Barra of General Motors, the highest-ranked female CEO in the Fortune 500 at No. 8, with $28,576,651.

The research also looks at the education each CEO received prior to taking their current positions. There are two courses of study which are clearly the most popular across genders. Many of the leaders pursued engineering degrees and even more popular, especially for women, is the Masters of Business Administration.

Another gender difference came to Ivy League graduates from Brown University, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale. 17 of the male CEOs attended an Ivy League school, compared to only eight of the female leaders.

Despite the discrepancies in representation across genders, the average age of these CEOs is 51.

Business culture is slow to shift, and CEOs might be in their position for a long time. Look at Warren Buffet who has headed Berkshire Hathaway since 1970. In 2014, the number of female CEOs in the top 1000 companies was only 51.

“Women still have limited representation in the Fortune 1000,” says Talentful’s Co-Founder Phil Blaydes. But she tells PINK, “It looks like that’s changing, albeit slowly. For all of those studied, their achievements are impressive. It takes a certain sort of character to become a CEO, no matter which gender you are.”