Top-ranked women in Britain's corporate world finally cracked the glass ceiling with salaries this year that exceeded those of their male counterparts, the Financial Times reported yesterday.
In a poll of nearly 22,000 managers from 354 companies of varying sizes, women who headed departments earned an average annual salary this year of ?51,854 (US$93,200), compared with ?50,459 (US$90,700 dollars) for men, the paper said.
"The research is immensely encouraging but there is a long way to go if women are to achieve parity," the Times quoted Christine Hayhurst, from the Chartered Management Institute which carried out the survey with another polling company, as saying.
The study, released on Tuesday, showed that women now occupy 13 percent of seats on executive boards, up from less than 10 percent five years ago. The first-ever result for women comes after their salaries rose faster than men's for eight years running.
Last year, men and women managers ran neck-and-neck, with male department heads keeping their historic lead by only ?475 (US$850) a year.
Hayhurst stressed, however, that very few blue-chip companies were led by women and that if progress toward equality halted "there is a real danger that we will continue to see a rise in the number of tribunal discrimination cases."
The gains made by top-ranked females were not shared by those further down the corporate ladder. Full-time women employees on average made 72 percent of the salaries earned by men, and 1,000 women have to take legal action each year in England and Wales because they are fired for getting pregnant, The Guardian said yesterday.
According to the newspaper, the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) found women were still sorely underrepresented at the top echelons of certain sectors in the UK.
They represented only 9 percent of business leaders and national newspaper editors, 7 percent of the senior judiciary and police and a mere 1 percent of the army elite, the EOC found.
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