New Delhi: Soft power seems to be taking over business across the world and Asian women – including leading female entrepreneurs in India – are generating more wealth than their counterparts across the world.
A study conducted by Britain’s leading wealth manager Barclays’ Wealth also looks to bust the stereotype shows marriage and inheritance have ceased to remain the only source of wealth for women who are increasingly gaining entrepreneurial affluence and influence.
"The affluence and influence of women is growing globally and is increasingly fuelled by their own individual enterprises - highlighting that the perception of inheritance and marriage as the lead sources of female wealth is out-dated,” says the survey titled 'Barclays Wealth Insights: a Question of Gender'.
A press release issued by Barclays said the present global picture of female wealth was largely driven by earnings and business ownership (83.9 per cent), or by personal investments (32.8 per cent), which compares favourably to marriage (24.7 per cent), divorce (2.2 per cent) and inheritance (19.9 per cent).
“A one-size-fits-all approach to managing this increasingly influential audience may not work,'' Gerard Aquilina, head of Barclays Wealth's International Private Bank, was quoted as saying in the statement.
London-based Barclays is the third-largest UK bank after HSBC Holdings Plc and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc.
The Indian case-studies in the research included entrepreneurs like joint MD of ICICI Bank Kalpana Morparia, and the multi-millionaire CEO of S & A foods Perween Warsi.
The report noted that wealth generated by female entrepreneurship was the highest in Asia. "Women are often more thoughtful and purpose-driven when it comes to investment behaviour," it said.
Between 2006 and 2007 the number of women featured on the Sunday Times Rich List increased from 81 to 92, and the combined wealth of Britain's richest women is now 33.27 billion pounds.
It is predicted that by 2010, 35 per cent of millionaires in the UK will be women.
Education is considered by women to be the single most important factor of wealth generation. School education was cited as key for Middle Eastern and African women (55.6 per cent), while European (55.7 per cent) and North American women (60 per cent) cited a university education as most important.
According to the survey, Asian women have highest confidence for tax planning (41.5 per cent), and Middle East and African women claim greatest knowledge for retirement planning (42.3 per cent), and investing in hedge funds (42.3 per cent).
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