How often have you heard something like this: Women execs are rare in Los Angeles. So rare that you can count on one hand the number of women who occupy one of the top spots at L.A.’s biggest companies.

But if you scanned the two lists we published last week – the highest-paid CEOs and the highest-paid non-CEOs of public companies in town – you might be surprised to discover you’ll need a second hand. There are six women on those lists.

OK, so six women out of 100 of L.A.’s most powerful execs is only 6 percent and not all that many. Still, six is more than you might expect. And it’s way more than the two we had on those lists last year.

Why the big increase? One important reason is that we ranked the pay of execs at smaller companies for the first time this year. In the past, we looked at the pay of the top execs at only the 50 biggest local public companies and ranked them, 1 through 50. This year, we looked at the pay of the top execs at all 165 local public companies and ranked them, 1 through 50.

And we discovered that smaller companies often pay a surprising amount to their top execs. In fact, we built our main story around that fact. (Hence the headline: “Small Cap, Big Pay.”)

But those smaller, rising companies also tend to have more women at or toward the top. And they pay those women handsomely; so much so that some of those women pushed their way onto our rankings. For example, Mary Ricks got $13.1 million last year in salary, bonuses, stock awards, etc., which put her at No. 7 – in the top 10! – on our list of highest-paid non-CEOs. She heads European operations for Kennedy-Wilson Holdings, a company that we didn’t include in the past because it was too small to qualify for the rankings.

Same is true for Lisa Harper, who earned $4.18 million, which landed her at No. 48 on our list of top CEO pay. She’s chief of Hot Topic, another company too small for our list in the past.

What does all this mean? Well, there might be something to the notion that it simply takes time to get to the top. Women have been rising through the ranks for years, and while they are common in the midlevels, they are still are fairly new to the very top echelon of corporate America. It makes sense that they would show up first at the top of smaller and midsize companies, which our lists tend to indicate. In future years, we’re likely to see more women populate the top spots at more midsize companies before they show up in meaningful numbers at the top of big companies.

And when we produce these lists a few years from now, we might need more than two hands to count the women.

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One of the most interesting quotes from last week came from the world’s second-wealthiest person, Mexico’s Carlos Slim.

He said, in case you missed it, that workers are at their prime in their 60s, at least in advanced countries. The article on CNBC.com was headlined “60 Is the New 30.”

“When you have an industrial economy like in the past where people … do a lot of physical work and people live less years, it’s OK to retire at 65,” Slim told CNBC. “When you have a society of knowledge and experience and information, at this age is where you are at your best. It’s (foolish) to retire at this age. … You are in your best in your 60s.”

Slim, who’s 73, made the comment in a discussion about how to fix the European economy, but it applies to the United States, which also needs to postpone retirements to help prop up Social Security.

By the way, 65-and-older workers are remaining in the workplace in greater numbers, so much so that it may be a certifiable trend. According to an article last January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 18.5 percent of Americans 65 and older were working in 2012. That’s way up from 1985, when only 10.8 percent of older folks were drawing a paycheck.

Don’t be surprised if those on-site day care facilities that so many companies installed in recent years will soon be converted to afternoon nap sanctuaries.

Charles Crumpley is the editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].