What’s not keeping CEOs up at night? Gender pay disparity. A survey of the concerns of 740 CEOs and 780 C-suite executives worldwide found that U.S. executives, who are overwhelmingly male, ranked “implement equal pay for equal work” last on their list of 19 hot-button issues, rating it a half-dozen places below “other.” Female executives worldwide ranked it 6th.
“This disparity in rankings is cause for concern,” write the authors of the report, which was commissioned by The Conference Board. Executives’ top internal focus, both internationally and in the U.S., is attracting and retaining talent—which hinges on, um, fairly paying the talent pool, which is more than half female or minority.
American companies are not required to release gender pay data, though last year, in an uncharacteristic jag of transparency, Citigroup voluntarily released that the company’s men earn 29% more than women, mostly a reflection of men’s domination of higher-paying roles; when comparing apple-to-apple job roles, Citigroup’s women earn only 1% less. Minorities at Citigroup earn 7% less than non-minorities overall.
Though CEOs seem to not, you know, care, regulators do: Many countries increasingly require companies to report gender pay data. In the U.K., for example, firms employing more than 250 people must annually release figures. Twenty-two percent of the S&P Global 1200 companies reported wage data last year, up from 9% the prior year, mostly thanks to government requirements, according to the report.
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