While women still earn a fraction of a man's wage in the United States, there is one niche where women are eking out an advantage -- and please check your stereotypes at the door. It's not fashion, or child care, or as spokespeople for psychic hotlines (though I think someone should look into that...). It's the boardroom.

Unbelievably, a report by Corporate Library that looked at pay data from more than 25,000 directors at 3,200+ companies found that women were paid more, on average, then men; $120,000 for women versus a median of $104,375 for men. Of course, given their much smaller numbers -- female directors are outnumbered by males, eight-to-one -- it's not exactly reason to take out our party hats, ladies.

The report doesn't theorize as to why, exactly, women are paid more. I wonder if it's due to the demand for a "product" in limited supply -- directors tend to be officers for other corporations, judges, or other highly-ranked folks. Far fewer of these are women. Hence, the women who are available to serve as directors must be paid more to lend their female presence.

Alternatively, it could be the simple fact that larger companies are more likely to desire diversity on their boards; and it is the larger companies who pay more. I wonder where newly-appointed News Corporation board member, 27-year-old Natalie Bancroft, fits on the director pay scale?

Despite the news of Greg Isaacs' departure having been mentioned in several sites, this key eBay director's recent departure hasn't made the wire reports news. Isaacs announced his departure yesterday.

Who is Greg Isaacs, some of you might wonder? He's not on the big eBay's management list, after all. True. Greg Isaacs is, or rather was, the Director of the Developer Program at eBay.

Through AuctionBytes Blog, I found that Isaacs was mentioned in July 2006 in CNNMoney's Business 2.0 journal in the top 50 people who matter. The top ten names in the list include Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google's co-founders, Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO and Ray Ozzie of Microsoft. Then, in number 31, Greg Isaac is mentioned. Skype's co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, are ranked after him at number 36, just to give you an idea.

Greg Isaacs had managed to persuade eBay's management to allow outside developers access to eBay's database so that they could build tools and widgets around it. Already several startups have sprung up from the developer site.