CEO pay is still a man's world

The results of a new study by boardroom watchdog The Corporate Library might lead you to conclude that last year was a bad time to be the CEO of a U.S. company. After all, top corporate executives saw their pay fall sharply from a year earlier as the recession decimated profits and sent the stock market into a nosedive.

Of course, it's never really a bad time to be a CEO. Even last year, it took some $70 million in total compensation to crack the list of ten highest-paid chief executives, according to The Corporate Library. That's nothing to scoff at (especially when you consider that it's about 20,000 times more than a typical citizen of, say, Liberia makes a year). Still, not all CEOs are created equal: Women executives saw their pay plummet even further than their male peers, the study found.