Women turn tables on men in boardroom

NEW YORK — They might be a small minority in corporate boardrooms, but women directors typically earn more than men, a new U.S. study has found.

Female directors in corporate America earned median compensation of $120,000, compared with $104,375 for male board members, research group the Corporate Library said in its annual director pay report.

At the same time, the study said, women in corporate boardrooms are outnumbered 8 to 1.

“This makes being a director one of the few jobs in the U.S. economy where the pay differential is reversed,” between men and women, the study found.

The study found that overall, median total compensation for individual U.S. board members was just over $100,000, based on companies’ annual proxies filed through last month. The median increase in total disclosed compensation was about 12% compared with the year-earlier period, the study said.

The report looked at pay data for more than 25,000 directors at more than 3,200 companies.

The pay increases were driven in part by the addition of previously undisclosed forms of compensation this year, said study author Paul Hodgson, a senior research associate at the Corporate Library. New regulatory rules require public companies to disclose the cost of perks, cash incentives and other elements of total pay for top executives as well as directors.

More than 80 directors earned more than $1 million in total compensation for a single board seat, according to the Portland, Maine-based governance researcher.

Director pay is typically far below what top corporate executives are awarded, though it has risen sharply in recent years as director oversight duties have increased. Activist shareholders say that director pay needs to remain in check because the job is basically part-time.

The Corporate Library also found that directors who have titles such as lord and judge tend to earn more than other board members. Even the least well-paid titled directors -- medical doctors -- earned a median total compensation of $105,181, above the median for all directors, it said.

The study found that 1,968 directors in the study had a title of some kind, or less than 8% of the total director population.

The study examined U.S. companies whose directors in some cases are European and hold titles.

“For governmental titles, judges are the highest-earning directors, while among the more traditional titles, knights earn the most,” Hodgson said.