Wealthy women
女性富豪
Sex and money
性别与金钱
Jun 14th 2007
From The Economist print edition
By 2020 over half of Britain’s millionaires may be female. Why?
到2020年，英国可能有超过半数的富豪是女性。为什么呢？
IN APRIL this year, 92 females graced the Sunday Times Rich List, an annual round-up of Britain’s 1,000 wealthiest people. Ten years ago there were 64. And rich women are getting richer, too: over the decade the average worth of female millionaires has grown by more than half. Today Britain’s wealthiest woman has £4.9 billion ($9.6 billion) to her name, compared with the paltry £1.5 billion her counterpart had in 1997. The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) reckons female millionaires will outnumber male ones by 2020, and by 2025 women will control 60% of the nation’s private wealth. They do better at school and in higher education, and they live longer. Girl power, it seems, never had it so good.
今年4月，92名女性登上《星期日泰晤士报》富豪排行榜，令这一汇集了英国1000名有钱人的年度排行熠熠生辉。十年前，上榜的女性有64位，而且有钱的女人也越来越有钱：十年来，女性富豪的平均财产增幅超过50%。如今英国最富有的女人名下拥有价值49亿英镑（96亿美元）的财产，而1997年最富有的女人仅有15亿英镑。据经济和商业研究中心（Centre for Economics and Business Research, CEBR）估测，到2020年女富豪人数将超越男富豪，而到2025年女富豪将控有全国私有财产的60%。这些女富豪上中、小学和大学期间表现都比较优秀，而且都是高寿。“女生们”的力量似乎从未如今天这般强大。
Is this wave of affluence a chimera or does it have solid underpinnings? A report this week by the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister company, for Barclays Wealth, a financial-management firm, claims that the historical sources of women’s wealth—marriage, inheritance and divorce—have been replaced by independent income, business ownership and investments. More than 80% of women now derive their riches from personal earnings, it says, particularly from their own businesses. Divorce, long the engine that propelled women into prosperity, is cited by only 2.9% of those questioned as the main source of their wealth.
这波富裕的浪潮纯粹是海市蜃楼还是会奔流不息呢？《经济学家》姐妹刊物《经济学人智库》（Economist Intelligence Unit）本周发表的一份由金融管理公司巴克莱财富（Barclays Wealth）提供的报告称，女性财富的来源已不再是结婚、遗产和离婚等带来的既得财富，而是独立收入、企业所有权和投资所得。报告说，现在80%的女性财富来自个人收入，特别是个人企业经营收入。长期以来，离婚一直是女性迈入富人行列的助推器，而这份报告显示受访者中仅有2.9%表示离婚是其财富的主要来源。
But Philip Beresford, who compiles the Rich List, dismisses the idea that women are breaking into its ranks independently of men. “There is no evidence, yet, of seriously rich female entrepreneurs coming in huge numbers,” he says. The woman who tops the list is in fact Lady Green, whose husband made them both a fortune in retailing. If the CEBR is correct, Mr Beresford thinks most British millionairesses will still be wives, daughters and divorcees.
但是这份富豪排行榜的编制人菲利普•贝雷斯福特（Philip Beresford）并不认同女人能进入排行榜完全与男人无关的观点。他说：“目前尚无迹象表明特别富有的女企业家人数正在猛增。”排名榜首的那位女富豪真实身份是格林夫人，其丈夫依靠零售业为夫妻俩赢得了大笔财富。贝雷斯福特认为，如果CEBR所言非虚，那么大多数英国女富豪财富来源仍将是婚姻、遗产继承和离婚赡养。
A glance at the number of women in the top ranks of business suggests he is right. Women make up only a tenth of the directors of FTSE-100 firms. They are also under-represented in the upper echelons of management. In a report in March, PricewaterhouseCoopers, an accountancy firm, said that the number of female senior managers in FTSE-350 firms had fallen by 40% since 2002. This may be due to a prevailing macho culture at the top; or it may reflect the costs of child care, which have risen by 27% in the same period.
从顶级企业排行中女性所占人数似乎一眼就可看出，他的观点是正确的。在FTSE（英国金融时报及伦敦证券交易所共同投资设立的国际知名指数编制公司）100强企业董事长中，女性仅占1/10，而且女性在高层管理人员中所占比例也很小。普华永道（PricewaterhouseCoopers）会计事务所在3月份公布的一项报告中称，2002年以来排名FTSE 前350位的企业中女性高层管理人员数量下降了40%。这与高端人士中大男子主义倾向越来越严重可能有关，或者从一个侧面也反映出儿童培养成本的增高（同期增长27%）。 If things look sticky at the top, women at the bottom find the relative going far tougher. Although the gap between men’s and women’s earnings has shrunk for those at all income levels, it remains far bigger among the poorest tenth than in any other group. The latest annual report from the Equal Opportunities Commission shows why: men still dominate highly paid work, and the proportion of female graduates in low-level jobs has rocketed in the past decade, along with the number of people going to university.
如果说女性在高层处境艰难的话，那么处于底层的女性就更难处理各种关系了。虽然对于处在同一收入水平的人而言，男女收入差距缩小了，但最穷的1/10人群与其他人之间的差距却拉得更大了。机会平等委员会（Equal Opportunities Commission）最新发布的年报指出了内中缘由：男性在高收入工作中仍占据主导地位，而十年来从事低收入工作的女毕业生所占比例随着大学入学人数的增长而飞速增长。It will take another 60 years before there is equality between the sexes in British business (and 200 to achieve the same in Parliament), the commission calculates. Progress, it moans, is “painfully slow and at risk of going into reverse”. It’s still hard to be a woman.
据该委员会估算，英国企业要实现男女平等还将需要60年的时间，而对于议会来说则需要200年。它抱怨说，进步“是缓慢而痛苦的，并且有倒退的可能。”做女人，依旧很难。