Sadly, this isn’t something specific to Trump’s America. A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing this week provided a stark reminder that we’re far from achieving gender equity in the workplace. The man who will take Marissa Mayer’s position at the company formerly known as Yahoo! will be earning double her salary. From Newsweek:
As the company gets set to complete a deal to sell a good portion of its assets to Verizon, her replacement at the technology company will make double her salary, according to an offer letter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week.
Thomas McInerney, 52, will head up Altaba, the re-branded version of whatever is left of Yahoo after it sells off assets. For running what remains of the company, McInerney—former chief financial officer of InterActiveCorp (IAC)—is set to make $2 million per year. Mayer, who will stay on with the company until the sale, currently has a base salary of $1 million. McInerney is also likely to make an additional $4 million in his first year if he can manage to hit a target bonus.
I am not going to pretend that this is making Mayer poor. In fact, she is going to get a big fat severance package worth $23 million for her departure—plus $57 million in stock options. This is simply an example showing that even leaders in the field can be subjected to sexism and lower compensation.
Hopefully this will renew the conversation around gender equity in the workplace. Research shows that white women earn, on average, 80 cents to every dollar their male counterparts make in the same positions. The gap can be worse depending on a few variables, including race, geographic location, and industry (A study by Glassdoor found the gender wage gap is pretty bad in the tech field.) To read more about the gender pay gap, check out this research by the American Association of University Women.