A few months back I was filming the videos for my FREE ‘7 Steps To Energised Wealth’ video training and in shooting one of the videos I talked about the number of female, self made, entrepreneur billionaires that have made the various rich lists.
At the time of filming, only a few short months ago, that figure was 14 women out of the 1200 odd billionaires out there.
Given women are only starting to really step into the role of mega entrepreneurship it’s pretty good to see but still pretty dismal as a percentage of the overall figure right?
So, today my heart raced a little with excitement as the latest Forbes Rich List was released and showed a 25% increase in the number of female billionaires in the world.
25% increase!!! That’s massive ……. Parabolic in fact !
Of the 268 newcomers to the list, 42 of them are women (15%) bringing the total number of female billionaires on the list to 172 (up from 138 in 2013).
But let’s look at the real figures for a second shall we …………
Women still only make up a little over 10% of the list.
An improvement of a teeny 0.5% on the 2013 figure!
On top of that, the most disheartening of all for me is that of the 42 women that made the list, only 5 of them built their own fortunes as opposed to inheriting them from their parents or husbands!
Only 12% of the newcomers made their fortunes themselves!
Now I don’t want to rain on the fabulous female parade that’s swarming around the new rich list but let’s be honest – it brings up the major question of why women are not stepping up more and reaching the heights of men in business and in wealth?
- Women are graduating from university at higher rates than men and have been since the 70’s.
- Women are launching businesses at a faster rate than men right now.
- The topics of feminine leadership and feminine business are being spoken about everywhere.
- The ‘Female Economy’ has been touted as a larger force in global economics than the ‘China Effect’
- There are endless programs out there to promote female leaders and female entrepreneurship
So why are women not showing up in the numbers at the same rate as men?
I understand that men will outweigh women on the rich lists for a long time yet. Let’s be fair, they have had centuries of a head start with business and money so this is not about competing against men.
This is about being aware of the unconscious biases that exist in our society when it comes to women and money. These might well be acting like an invisible brake on the entrepreneurial pursuits of women.
In my view, celebrating the women who have stormed the rich lists through their own pursuits is hugely important but we also need to address this new conversation so we can get more women stepping up into that bigger game and believing they can do it …….. all by themselves!
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andreanavarro/2014/03/03/the-worlds-richest-women-2014/
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