Divorce, inheritance and business nous
has helped a growing number of women to become millionaires, who have
increased at five times the rate of wealthy men.
Wealth used to be a man's world, but the gap between the sexes is
narrowing when it comes to money, a new report shows.
In Britain, the number of female millionaires has been rising on the
back of social trends - such as inheritance and the rapidly climbing
divorce rate - and they now make up nearly half of all millionaires in the
UK, according to independent market analyst Datamonitor.
On top of that, a new generation of women have started to prosper in
their own right, and female entrepreneurs are increasingly growing in
number.
While a male millionaire's wealth has increased by an average 9.2 per
cent over the past eight years, the worth of a female millionaire has
ballooned by 53.9 per cent, Datamonitor found.
The British study showed that in 1998, the average male millionaire was
worth ￡2.71 million (AUS$6.51m), while the female equivalent owned just
￡1.28m.
But by 2006, the gap had narrowed to ￡2.96m for male millionaires and
￡1.97m for women.
Women make up about 46 per cent of Britain's 376,000 millionaires - and
their number is growing by almost 11 per cent a year.
Some 3800 British women owned liquid assets of more than￡5m,
Datamonitor said.
The number of women of "high net worth" status (classified as those
with onshore liquid assets of more than ￡200,000) overtook men in 2005 -
with 448,100 rich women compared to 429,300 men.
Nine of the world's fifty richest people are women.
The richest self-made woman
in the world is Rosalia Mera (61) of Spain, who is worth approximately
$2.4 billion.
She started off making gowns and lingerie in her home. Her business
eventually grew into the apparel manufacturer Inditex, which sold $6
billion worth of clothes last
year.
