Yahoo! chief Marissa Mayer the third highest paid female executive in the United States

Yahoo! chief Marissa Mayer earned as much as a whopping US$24.9 million in 2013 compensation, landed her No. 3 on the list of 25 top-earning female executive in the United States – highest-paid women for this year, according to rankings released today by Fortune magazine.

Taking the top spot this year is Martine Rothblatt, the CEO of United Therapeutics Corp. with a compensation of $38.2 million. She pushes Co-CEO of Oracle Safra Catz occupied the second position, with total compensation of $37.6 million.

Rothblatt is the founder of Sirius Satellite Radio and was also born male, who underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1994, wrote New York Magazine.

“It’s like winning the lottery,” Rothblatt said happily, about seeing her name atop the list, during one of the meetings I had with her this summer. But Rothblatt could not be less interested in establishing herself as a role model for women. “I can’t claim that what I have achieved is equivalent to what a woman has achieved. For the first half of my life, I was male,” she said.

At fourth place in the list is Cheniere Energy’s SVP, Marketing Meg Gentle, The TJX Companies chief executive officer Carol Meyrowitz at fifth place and General Dynamics chairwoman and CEO Phebe Novakovic  at sixth , who made US$18.78 million last year.

(Photo: Yahoo! CEO, Marissa Mayer speaks at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2014)

Meanwhile, a crucial question hangs over Yahoo! chief Marissa Mayer:

What should Yahoo! do with the roughly $5 billion it will receive in cash for selling a portion of its Alibaba Group holdings?