Many Subsidiaries Pay Executive Women Well

The article, “For Women Executives, Progress Is Slow in Coming,” (May 28), on the highest-paid women executives in California may well be incomplete, due to the limitations of picking this information only from proxy statements.

Transamerica Life Cos. alone has 28 female officers whose total compensation in 1990 was in excess of your count for No. 78.

I suspect this is true for many other companies in California. Many of us are subsidiaries of holding companies, yet much of the progress is being made at the subsidiary level.

DAVID R. CARPENTER

Los Angeles

Editor’s note: We were, indeed, limited to reporting the salaries listed in proxy statements of publicly held companies. We recognize that many women earn more than the salaries listed, but their wages are not publicly available.

It is important to note, however, that the same limitations applied to the highest-paid men. It was simply less obvious because No. 100 on the men’s list still earned upwards of $1.4 million.