Merely 12 per cent of the world’s 2325 billionaires are women, this year’s Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census says. Of the 286 female billionaires, 65 per cent have fully inherited their wealth. Only 13.1 per cent male billionaires completely inherited their wealth.
The census shows that 21 per cent of female billionaires are widowed and many have inherited their husbands’ wealth.
Only 49 women — 17 per cent of the 286 female billionaires — have generated their own wealth, the report says. In contrast, 60 per cent of the men are self-made billionaires. Also, the mean net worth of self-made female billionaires is over a billion dollars lower than the mean net worth of the self-made male billionaires.
“Although we expect that the size of the self-made female billionaire population will increase in the coming years, there is still a long way to go before even the proportion of self-made female billionaires matches that of self-made male billionaires,” the report observes.
India failed to make its mark in the list of female billionaires, though it appears sixth in the list of top 40 billionaire countries.
Even the vocations of male and female billionaires change drastically. While many female billionaires occupy a place in non-profit and charitable organisations, the sector does not figure among the top five vocations of male billionaires. The other top four industries featuring female billionaires are finance, banking and investment; industrial conglomerates; textiles, apparels and luxury goods; and food products.
The top five industries featuring male billionaires are finance, banking and investment; industrial conglomerates; real estate; manufacturing; and textiles, apparels and luxury goods. Interestingly, the average age of self-made female billionaires is lower at 59, while that of the other female billionaires (who inherited their wealth) is 62. The average age of male billionaires is 64.
The report observes that Asia is a fast-developing market, which has added sizeable number of billionaires to the world list this year. It reflects in the territorial representation of female billionaires too.
