Why Aren’t There More Female Billionaires in the World?

Only 294 of the approximately 2,500 billionaires in the world are women, the New York Times reported.

That figure isn’t likely to change any time soon, either. The numbers have sharply increased in recent years, jumping from 11 female billionaires in 2000 to the current total. But the number of female billionaires is growing at half the rate of men, according to research firm Wealth X. Further, the number of women with net worths of more than $30 million declined in 2015.

“The higher up you move in the income distribution, the lower the proportion of women,” Gabriel Zucman, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Times. “It shows that there is a fundamental form of inequality at the top related to gender.”

Another discouraging statistics? Only 49 of the 294 female billionaires are self-made, according to Wealth X, meaning that the others accumulated their wealth with the help of an inheritance. Experts attributed the gap to discrimination and a lack of female executives in the c-suite at top-earning companies.

“We are still a long, long way from gender equality at the top,” Zucman said

[The New York Times]