newser.com - (Newser) – Researchers have identified a group of women who actually get paid more than their male counterparts for the same work—but that group consists of just eight people. Executive compensation research firm Equilar looked at the CEOs of the 100 largest public companies and found the eight women among them earned an average of $22.7 million in 2015, while male CEOs received a measly $14.9 million on average, reports the Washington Post. The trend also occurred in companies listed in Standard & Poor's 500 stock index, with 23 female CEOs receiving an average of around $13 million, compared to $11 million for their far more numerous male counterparts.

The small sample size and the whopping $53 million pay package of Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz, the highest-paid CEO of them all, skewed the Equilar averages, notes Fortune, but female CEOs of the biggest companies also had a median income of $20 million, compared to a median of $14.5 million for all 100. Further, Equilar notes that of the eight, only two fell outside of the top 25. A pay expert tells the Post it's possible that "in order to get to the CEO role, maybe these women have to be twice as smart and twice as good, and therefore they earn more," but pay level at the biggest companies tends to be set on "market data and peer groups" and doesn't factor in gender. The seven women who, with Catz, make up the group: