... AND WHY THERE ARE MORE MEN CALLED DAVE THAN WOMEN IN WHOLE FTSE 100!

In a damning indictment of the gender gap in British business, just six of the FTSE 100 chief executives are women – that’s two FEWER than the men named David

WOMEN suffer from the gender pay gap even if they reach the very pinnacle of corporate Britain, The Mail on Sunday’s investigation into top pay has revealed. Female bosses face a battle to become chief executive of firms in the elite FTSE 100 share index.

There were more men called David leading Footsie firms last year than there were women. Eight Davids (or Daves) held top jobs in 2016, compared with just six female executives.

Even when they do break through, women are likely to earn significantly less than the men. The half dozen trail-blazing female bosses took home an average annual pay and bonus package of £2.6million. For the 94 men, the average was £4.5 million.

Or, as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development puts it, women leaders accounted for 6 per cent of the index in 2016, but received just 4 per cent of the pay. Only one woman, Alison Cooper, who runs tobacco company Imperial Brands, ranked among the 25 best-paid Footsie chiefs. She came in at number 22 with an annual pay and bonus of £5.53 million.

Cooper, 51, a mother of two, is one of the few women to have reached the boardroom in the male-dominated tobacco industry, and since she took over in 2010, Imperial shares have gone up 74 per cent.

The remaining female chief executives were confined to the bottom third of the Footsie salary list.

‘Men are more forceful on salary because they are in the boys’ club,’ said Justin Urquhart Stewart of Seven Investment Management. ‘They are likely to have a group of mates who serve on pay committees and benefit from the locker room chat on pay and perks.’

He added that he expected to see more women at the top in future because they were more flexible and skilled at handling change. He said: ‘At the risk of a stereotype, women can multi-task.’

The lowest paid female Footsie boss of 2016 was easyJet’s Dame Carolyn McCall, who came 93rd in the rankings. McCall, 55, won plaudits for her time at the budget airline despite patches of turbulence.

A mother of three teenagers, she puts her success down to having to be ‘hyper-organised’. After arriving at the airline in 2010, the former boss of the Guardian media empire delivered four years of successive profits, and on her watch the shares have risen more than 200 per cent.

Though her pay was fairly modest last year at £1.46million, she earned £6.2million in 2015, and has made about £30million in her time at the company.

McCall is one of the best-regarded executives of either gender in the Footsie and recently won the plum job of chief executive at ITV.

When she takes over at the broadcaster next year, it will be on a lower base salary and pension than her predecessor Adam Crozier, but on a higher long-term incentive plan that could deliver a maximum of £25.2 million over five years, slightly more than his potential reward. Liv Garfield, 41, was the youngest

Sfemale Footsie boss when she took over at water firm Severn Trent in 2014, having made her name at BT. A Yorkshire-born mother of two and a Cambridge graduate, she has seen shares rise by 27 per cent since she arrived – but she is only number 70 in the pay table. HARES in Whitbread, the owner of Premier Inns and Costa Coffee, have fallen since former banking executive Alison Brittain, 52, took the helm in 2015. But she still commands admiration from City experts, who say she’s turning the business around. Urquhart Stewart says: ‘She has done a brilliant job but has yet to see that reflected in the share price.’

Brittain is 67th in the pay table and says, despite her credentials, men sometimes ‘try to talk over me’. Moya Greene, 63, the Canadian boss of Royal Mail, took over a business that was challenged by difficult trade union relations, fierce competition in the parcels business, set against the demise of traditional letters with the advent of texting and email. With a package of less than £2million a year, she is 82nd on the pay list.

Royal Mail’s share price has been volatile since the flotation in 2014 at 330p and the company dropped out of the FTSE 100 last week. Even so, Greene is highly respected and with good reason. The group was suffering losses of £49million a year when she joined, but this year made a £712million operating profit.

She has just joined the board of easyJet, where she is tipped to take over from Carolyn McCall – a timely return as a Footsie boss. In 87th place is Veronique Laury, 52. The mother of three and former showjumper, counts home renovation as her main hobby – appropriately enough for the boss of Kingfisher. She has renovated three houses in her native France, earning herself the nickname ‘Madame Bricolage’ or ‘Mrs DIY’.

She hasn’t yet been able to renovate Kingfisher’s share price, which is down 7 per cent since she took the helm in 2014 though analysts say it has done better than some rivals in a troubled sector.

The female bosses who graced the Footsie in 2016 have recently been joined by another, Emma Walmsley, 48, at pharmaceutical group GlaxoSmithKline. Full details of the mother of four’s rewards will not emerge until next year, but her overall package is expected to be 25 per cent less than that of her predecessor Sir Andrew Witty.