4 out of 10 CEOs with the highest salary packages are women

The top women CEOs are killing it with the median compensation for the nine women on the top 100 list being higher than the median pay for the remaining 91 male CEOs

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi had said:

Leadership is hard to define and good leadership even harder. But if you can get people to follow you to the ends of the earth, you are a great leader.

In the list of the top 10 highest-paid American CEOs of 2016, there is not one but four admirable leaders who can be followed to the ends of the earth. In 2015, just two female head honchos had made it to the list.

In the recently released list by Equilar, Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle, makes it to number 5, Meg Whitman of Hewlett Packard Enterprise follows closely at number 6, Ginni Rometty of IBM is at number 8, and Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo is at number 10, all feature in Executive Compensation and Board Intelligence Solutions provider Equilar's list of the 100 highest-paid executives of 2016.

The salary packages of the best compensated CEOs at the largest US companies by revenue has increased by an average of six percent in 2016 — the biggest growth seen since 2013, says Equilar. The median pay was an eye-popping $15 million.

A total of nine female CEOs appear on the Equilar top 100 this year, up from the eight who made it in 2015. The women surpassed the median pay for the list as a whole, phenomenally out-earning the men. The median total compensation for the nine women on the list was $21.2 million in 2016, compared to a median $14.4 million for the 92 male CEOs.

While Catz of Oracle is the highest-paid female CEO in the USA, her total compensation dropped to $40.9 million from $53.2 million in 2015. However, the other top three — Whitman, Rometty, and Nooyi — all enjoy an increased pay package. Whitman's compensation reached $32.9 million, up from $17.1 million in 2015. Rometty earned $32.3 million in 2016 from $19.8 million the previous year. Nooyi’s compensation was $25.1 million, from $22 million in 2015.

However, in terms of gender diversity, the total number of female CEOs is still poor. The number of female CEOs on the most recent Fortune 500 list dropped to 21 in 2016, down from 23 the year before. For the working women of the world, more number of women at the top will usher in more visibility at work.