LONDON (AFP) - Top-ranked women in Britain's corporate world finally cracked the glass ceiling with salaries this year that exceeded those of their male counterparts.
In a poll of nearly 22,000 managers from 354 companies of varying sizes, women who headed departments earned an average annual salary this year of 51,854 pounds (93,222 dollars, 76,041 euros), compared with 50,459 pounds (90,707 dollars, 73,987 euros) for men, the Financial Times paper said.
"The research is immensely encouraging but there is a long way to go if women are to achieve parity," it quoted Christine Hayhurst, from the Chartered Management Institute which carried out the survey along with a polling company, as saying.
The study, released Tuesday, showed that women now occupy 13 percent of seats on executive boards, up from less than 10 percent five years ago.
The first-ever salary excedent for women comes after their salaries rose faster than men's for eight years running.
Last year, men and women managers ran neck-and-neck, with male department heads keeping their historic lead by only 475 pounds a year.
Hayhurst stressed, however, that very few blue-chip companies were led by women and that if progress toward equality halted "there is a real danger that we will continue to see a rise in the number of tribunal discrimination cases".
The gains made by top-ranked females were not shared by those further down the corporate ladder.
Full-time women employees on average made 72 percent of the salaries earned by men, and 1,000 women have to take legal action each year in England and Wales because they are fired for getting pregnant, the Guardian said Wednesday.
According to the newspaper, the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) found women were still sorely underrepresented at the top echelons of certain sectors in Britain.
They represented only nine percent of business leaders and national newspaper editors, seven percent of the senior judiciary and police and a mere one percent of the army elite, the EOC found.
Its chair, Julie Mellor, blamed a "lack of flexible working options" for keeping many women from acquiring the level of experience needed to break into management, the Guardian reported.
The best earnings opportunity for women was in engineering, the Chartered Management Institute survey found, where women's salaries scaled 4,538 pounds to 38,838 in the past year.