• CEOs in general made less in 2008 than the year before, as high-risk activities led stocks to dive, companies to fail and heads to roll. But women fared far worse than their male counterparts, The Corporate Library found.

• The 3% of 2,703 US publicly held companies included in the survey who were women saw their compensation tumble by 18.5%. The other 97% suffered only a 6.1% decline.

• Overall, the women made only 58% of what the men made, far greater than the national average gender wage gap of 22%.

• The median base salary for the women was $40,000, still higher than male CEOs’ base, but the discretionary portions of the men’s compensation came in 3.5 times greater than what the women received. Non-salary fixed compensation for men was nearly twice as big as what the women received.

• The only woman among the highest-grossing CEOs on the list was Martine Rothblatt of United Therapeutics. Her total compensation in 2008 was $21.8 million.

The Reuters report in the Straits Times