Apparently Women Are Better At Making Money Than Men, Proves Forbes’ Female Billionaires List
As far as billionaires are concerned, there are multiple females that have made the list, but they are often outnumbered by their male equivalents.
To highlight the efforts of the women who have made it to the three comma club, Forbes has put together a Power Women list. There are just about 13 females who are billionaires on that list, but the overwhelming truth is that most of these women have proven to be extremely good at making money from scratch.
According to Forbes, 10 of the 13 female billionaires on the list are self-made. In other words, these women didn’t receive any bulky inheritance or a handsome handout to make their fortune. On the contrary, these women worked their way into the billionaires club from various fields such as finance, fashion, entertainment, or tech. These women have proven to be much better at making loads of money and building their fortunes than their male counterparts.
Three of the female billionaires made their fortunes from the world of fashion, and three from technology. From the fashion world, 43-year-old Spanx founder Sara Blakely is the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Next is Tory Burch, who at 47, made her fortunes from $200 ballet flats. Last one is Miuccia Prada, aged 65, who recently became co-CEO of the fashion house started by her grandfather.
From the tech world, the three women who became billionaires are Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, who led eBay for 10 years, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Laurene owns more than 130 million shares of Disney, which incidentally are collectively worth three times more than her stake in Apple. Sheryl’s fortune keeps fluctuating near the $1 billion mark, owning to regular changes in the valuation of the 12 million Facebook shares she owns.
Oprah Winfrey, the only African-American woman on the female billionaires sub-list, is worth $3 billion and is credited with turning the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) from a money sink into a money maker (OWN turned cash flow positive last year). Incidentally, Oprah also topped Forbes‘ Celebrity 100 list in 2013. Two Asian women who made the list are Wu Yajun and Zhang Xin, both from China. The former owns a real-estate empire while the latter is the co-founder of Soho, reported WebProNews.
Even those women who aren’t self-made billionaires are quite powerful, hardworking and influential. Gina Rinehart inherited her father’s mining operation in Australia and is now the richest person in the country. Melinda Gates, 49, co-chairs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Interestingly, the Forbes Power Women List includes a name that doesn’t even have millions, let alone billions, to her name. According to Forbes, Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor is by far the most powerful women.
[Image Credit | Forbes]
