In a list of the richest women in the world by region, Christy Walton, one of the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, sits at a the top.
Walton’s fortune of $37.9 billion puts her above the second woman on the list, Europe’s Lilianne Bettencourt, 92, a French heiress of L’Oreal who lays claim to $31.3 billion,
according to the Wealth-X list of richest women in each region in the world.
Third on the list is Georgina “Gina” Rinehart, an Australian mining heiress with an estimated $14.8 billion.
In a separate ranking, Wealth-X said it was determined there are 286 women billionaires in the world, which accounts for 12.3 percent of the total global billionaire population of 2,325. “The average age of female billionaires is 61 years old. The female billionaire population controls 12.8% of the world’s total billionaire wealth of US$7.3 trillion,” the organization’s website said.
MarketWatch noted only one woman on the list was self-made, with the others inheriting their wealth. Women were “under-represented elsewhere when it comes to wealth and power, as well,” MarketWatch said, pointing to the fact that women hold just 5 percent of CEO positions in Fortune 1,000 companies and they hold just 99 of the 535 Congressional seats.
The youngest woman on the Wealth-X list was Yang Huiyan, 33, whose father transferred shares of his Chinese real estate development company to her before a 2007 initial public offering.
Also on the list are three daughters of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, each with $6.3 billion.
Identifying the
richest women in the United States was made easy in early October by a Movoto map, which shows the category by state. That map showed that closely following Walton in the U.S. is Texan Alice Walton, with $33.5 billion.
Writing about the Movoto map,
Refinery 29 pointed out that while most of the U.S. women inherited their fortunes, so did the bulk of the rich men.