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Thursday 8 March 2012

World's Youngest Female Billionaire

Spanx Logo.
Forbes magazine recently put what it believes to be the world's youngest female billionaire: 41-year-old Sara Blakely, inventor of Spanx®. You can read the full article here, but I'd like to highlight some key points.

First of all, Sara Blakely is 41. While that is by no means ancient, it's a disparate number from what Forbes has crowned the Facebook Four, the youngest of whom is 27. The same article the mentions the facebook four later goes on to state that the youngest women of wealth  "both inherited, rather than built their fortunes". Apparently, that is what makes Sara Blakely so unique; that she built her wealth without the help or financial backing of a man.


From Sara Blakely's cover on Forbes.
Now, am I the only one that finds that to be a shame? Maybe it's coincidence, maybe it's just the way that things played out, but why are there not more female powerhouses in the business of being extremely rich? I know, being rich isn't everything, but only 2 out of the 20 youngest billionaires are women. That's 10%. And they inherited their position from a man.


Why the lack of female entrepreneurship? What do you think? Post comments or tweet me on twitter and get into the discussion.


UPDATE: Thanks to Heather (see comments) I have a few articles for you guys to check out if you're interested in this topic further.


1. Bank of America Long-Term Projections
2. The Triumph of Working Women Around the World
3. The Richer Sex

10 comments:

  1. Because women suck at business.

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  2. Or because Men steal their ideas.

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  3. ^clearly a woman

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    Replies
    1. ^ clearly a misogynist.

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    2. clearly the go to insult of a woman who ran out of ideas, which is why women are rarely successful at business.

      Delete
  4. ^ clearly proving oneself a misogynist.

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  5. If women didn't spend the first 20 years of adulthood attempting to set the knob polishing record, they'd make something of themselves.

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  6. oooh do I have some articles for you to check out that nicely go with this theme. Extremely interesting I'm doing a group presentation on them for my human comm course.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/bank-of-america-issues-big-long-term-bullish-call-on-women-2012-3

    http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/the-spectacular-triumph-of-working-women-around-the-world/254063/

    http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/03/06/the-richer-sex/

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    Replies
    1. I'm happy to see I'm not the only person interested in this topic; great articles!

      I was thinking of switching into a business school, actually. I want to look at going into the marketing business.

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  7. Women... I tell yeah.

    ReplyDelete