The Feminist Billionaire Paradox
As a feminist copywriter and campaigner, I spend my days working with predominantly women-led and purpose-driven businesses tackling taboos on all things money, power and freedom, and trying to (re)imagine what a more just and equitable world looks like. Unashamedly, I want to see more money in the hands of more women, non-binary, and underrepresented people, because in our current society, money = freedom.
So you can imagine my delight, content planning with a client a few months ago, when this paradox was floated: Is there such a thing as a feminist billionaire?
As often happens when I get dangled a juicy content carrot like this one, my mind starts to race. It marinates away while I brush my teeth, while I wait for the kettle to boil, while I choose which go-big-or-go-home earrings to wear for the day.
Could any current billionaires be considered feminists?
Whose feminism are we talking about?
What would be the criteria?
Is there a feminist way to make a fortune?
I must admit, when I first started thinking about what it would mean to be a feminist billionaire — I figured, sure, I guess it’s possible — but it would depend heavily on how you made your money and what you did with it once you had it.
You couldn’t earn it profiting from oppression or extracting from others, or the land, and you couldn’t spend it in ways that further entrenched poverty, discrimination and injustice. But what about beyond that? Could you inherit wealth and then give it away - would that be feminist?
As you can imagine, the more I started to think about it, and seek the insights of others, the waters started getting murkier.
All the honeys makin’ money
Before we can declare if we are in fact living our feminist billionaire era — we first need to decide if it’s even possible — or whether the very existence of billionaires is antithetical to feminist principles that fight for equity, the redistribution of wealth, and the freedom of all from patriarchy, capitalist exploitation, colonisation, and other systems of oppression.
So, let’s first take a look at how many women in the world are considered to be billionaires. According to Forbes, there are currently 337 women billionaires around the globe and they make up 13 percent of the global billionaire population. So, they’re in the minority.
Among them — Judy Faulkner, computer programmer and founder of medical-record software provider, Epic. There’s Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, founder of cosmetic magnate L’Oréal. And MacKenzie Scott (formerly Bezos), novelist, philanthropist and former Amazon co-founder, who received tens of billions in their divorce settlement.
There’s Rihanna. Kim Kardashian. Melanie Perkins, founder of Canva. Oprah. Melinda French Gates. Ex-COO of Meta, Sheryl Sandberg. Gina Rinehart. And as of October 2023, Taylor Swift. The list goes on…
Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels
She works hard for the money?
Just over 100 of the women on the Forbes uber-rich list are considered to be ‘self-made’ — as in they founded or cofounded a company or established their own fortune, as opposed to inheriting it. Truth be known, unpacking what does (and does not) count as ‘self-made’ deserves an article of its own.
Going back to the data for a moment — in a 2023 study by Emma Ischinsky & Daria Tisch called: ‘Women in the Global Super Rich’, they examine changes in the gender composition of global billionaires over the last 14 years. They found that there was a modest increase in the percentage of women billionaires between 2010 and 2023, from 9.0 to 12.8 percent.
While the women on the list considered to be ‘self-made’ more than doubled over the 13 years of the study, women who were heirs to intergenerational fortunes also increased by 43 percent in that same time period. And there it is.
As Ischinsky and Tisch go on to highlight, it’s important to differentiate between the source of a billionaires’ wealth, particularly when it comes to studying gender differences.
The feminist economy
Of course, just because you’re a woman, a billionaire and/or an entrepreneur, doesn’t make you a feminist. Though, I’d argue, it’s not possible to be the latter without the hard fought sacrifices of those who are.
So, if we take a look around at the tiny handful of people who could be considered feminists and billionaires — does anything start to become clearer? Do we see evidence that women are held to a higher standard when it comes to their money? And what does it mean to earn and spend money in a feminist way?
Well, according to women-run investing platform Verve Money, a financial feminist is someone who embraces the “crucial intersection of feminism and finance” to break down gender barriers and foster economic equality.
It means being in control of how, when, and on what you spend your money. It means splashing your cash with women and non-binary owned and led businesses. It means making sure your money, including any investments and superannuation, is driving the world towards equality — not funding fossil fuels, guns, or modern slavery.
To me, being a financial feminist also means donating to and supporting feminist causes, where you can. It means valuing unpaid, invisible and mental labour. It means supporting (and funding) reproductive rights. It means supporting paid parental leave and fighting for pay equity.
It means advocating for financial products and services that meet the needs of underserved communities, including those that address the unique challenges faced by those communities. It means redistributing your wealth, be it earned or inherited. It means a lot of things, and this is just at a minimum.
So, are there any of the world’s current or former billionaires who might be considered to be ticking some, or all, of these boxes?
All about the Benjamins
Both Melinda French Gates and MacKenzie Scott were well-publicised for donating $US40 million to gender equality initiatives in 2021. This is on top of $1 billion that Gates has already given to furthering gender equality and building the power and influence of women. And since her divorce settlement, Scott has already given away nearly half her fortune. That’s definitely something.
Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx and the youngest-ever woman to amass her own billion dollar fortune, pledged to give most of it away, becoming the first woman billionaire to join the Giving Pledge — a non-binding moral contract — to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. That’s also something.
Oprah Winfrey, considered to be the first ‘self-made’ Black woman billionaire in the US, gives back to community through a school for girls in South Africa, and via historically Black schools and universities in the US, as well as giving to disaster relief and humanitarian organisations. That’s not nothing, especially when we consider the racial disparities behind ‘who’ is able to accumulate wealth (more on that to come), and if we accept that women are held to a higher standard, then Women of Colour are held to an even higher one.
Melanie Perkins, founder of Canva, has vowed to give most of her fortune away, saying that being part of the ‘billionaire club’ doesn’t sit quite right: “It has felt strange when people refer to us as ‘billionaires’ as it has never felt like our money, we’ve always felt that we’re purely custodians of it”. Love that (but is it also not a little problematic?).
And if we look beyond women for other billionaires leading from their values, there’s Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, who pledged to give all of the company’s profits to the planet. While it could be argued that giving your money back to the planet is a feminist act, as Erin Monahan, co-founder of Terra Incognita Media points out in her essay ‘No Good Billionaires’:
“Truth be told an 83 year old cis white man, who throughout his lifetime has accrued and hoarded excess wealth by way of exploiting low-wage workers and continues to do so, is actually sorely incapable of ‘reimagining capitalism’.”
I imagine she drops the mic not long after this, I know I would.
Photo by Rosa Rafael on Unsplash
Shake It Off
At its heart, the question of whether there can be such a thing as a feminist billionaire is more than a mere juxtaposition of financial status and feminist ideals; it's a dive deep into the inherent contradictions and inequities within systems of wealth and power, examined through a feminist lens.
The data also shows that women, regardless of how much they have, give more generously to charity, despite experiencing a Gender Pay Gap, Investment Gap, and Retirement Gap. And the reality is that the world’s billionaires could give money away at a rapid rate, and they’d still have plenty of it.
Because despite inflation and the hefty cost of living crisis, there’s a thing called compound interest and a b.i.l.l.i.o.n dollars is still a helluva lot of money. It’s literally one thousand million dollars. 1,000,000,000 — and that’s a lot of zeros in anyone’s language.
So, before I’m prepared to say — one way or the other — if there is such a thing as a feminist billionaire, let’s explore, for a moment, who is able to accumulate wealth in society as it stands, and how narrow the definition of ‘wealth’ truly is in a capitalist, patriarchal and colonised world.
A Flawed System
The scope of ‘wealth’ as most of us understand it is frustratingly myopic; a concept all about dollars that makes very little sense. Seeing wealth this way fuels inequality, ever deepening the divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. It also so often fails to recognise or value the diverse and meaningful contributions and needs of all members of society. After all, we’re not sitting here discussing billionaire nurses, social workers, teachers, and cleaners. So, let’s agree that ‘wealth’ itself needs a wholescale redefinition.
While we’re at it, we’re gonna need more than a moment to speak to the ongoing impacts of colonisation, stolen wages, and the widespread dispossession of First Nations people from their lands — because we cannot talk about ‘wealth’ without also talking about colonisation.
We need more than a moment to acknowledge colonisation’s fundamental disruption of the long-standing economic systems, social structures, and innately sustainable ways of life that have been embodied by First Nations people, the world over, for millennia. And we need far more than a moment to listen to (and learn from) the deep and enduring wisdom of Aboriginal women like Larisha Jerome (Jarowair, Wakka Wakka & Wulli Wulli) who are working to heal Blak women’s relationships with money, release the shame (that should’ve never been theirs to begin with) and get their land back.
We absolutely need more than a moment, for someone far more qualified than me, to speak to slavery and its direct theft of labour. These systems were (are) no accident. They were (are) part of a calculated economic model that enriched and elevated enslavers in ways that often translated into generational wealth, passed down through families. Meanwhile, enslaved persons were flat out denied any economic benefits of their painstaking and profit-making work, let alone land or reparations, and instead were given scars of transgenerational trauma (as well as righteous defiance, and other things).
Further still, especially for a country like Australia, which has a significant population born overseas — we need much more than a moment for immigration policies that restrict job opportunities, access to social services, and the ability to own property for migrants, refugees and people seeking asylum.
And we would need more moments still, to speak to the myriad gender, age and race wealth gaps that exist as a result of policies and practices that have systematically excluded certain people from opportunities to grow their ‘wealth’; capitalising on disparity, monetising injustice, exploiting labour, extracting value, stealing land, and prioritising profit over people and the planet.
All of this without even touching on tax loopholes for the super rich (by the way, a feminist issue), the sufficiency of so-called mega philanthropy versus widespread systemic change, the impact of financial abuse, and the climate emissions of the world’s richest people.
Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash
Long Story Short(ish)
And this is where I have settled: no — there is no such thing as a feminist billionaire.
At least not in a system that allows such an unequal distribution of wealth (and power) for a billionaire to emerge.
Not unless everyone in that system has their basic needs met, for food, water, housing, self-determination, and access to justice. Along with their needs for connection, joy, and things-beyond-survival too.
Not in an economy with such a narrow definition of ‘wealth’ as to have half of the world's wealth owned by one percent of the population, while ten times that many live in poverty.
And not if we agree that feminism, at its core, is about challenging systemic inequalities and advocating for the dismantling of oppressive structures. Because that feminism would have to include the very systems that enable the accumulation of wealth to the magnitude of billions in the first place.
So, I’m sorry Taylor et al., you may be a lot of things, maybe even a billionaire feminist. But a feminist billionaire? There ain’t no such thing.
An abridged version of this article was originally published on women-owned independent media platform, Women’s Agenda, and as a longer form systemic critique on free financial education platform, Ladies Talk Money.
