Nine of the 20 highest-paid GCs on last year’s overall list of highest-paid GCs were women, an encouraging indicator that the stubborn gender pay gap might finally be closing. But the number of women on this year’s top 20 fell to five.

“I’m disappointed. We seemed to be improving last year, but now we’ve hit a huge drop-off,” Katherine Loanzon, managing director at Kinney Recruiting in New York, said in July. “The pandemic may have been a factor as it caused a lot of female executives to have to come to terms with balancing the family versus their professional responsibilities.”