The Great Wealth Transfer

Women’s unprecedented financial power today is, in large part, the result of feminism’s victories.

• In 2015, women bypassed the halfway mark for controlled personal wealth in the U.S. Women now own 51 percent of all personal wealth in the nation.
• By 2030, it is estimated that women in the U.S. will control two-thirds of the nation’s wealth, which means women’s philanthropic impact will increase substantially, given their propensity for giving.

The reason: As much as $68 trillion is expected to be passed on from U.S. baby boomers, a phenomenon that financial experts have coined the “Great Wealth Transfer.” It is considered a monumental occurrence, not because of the wealth itself, but because women who typically outlive men will inherit most of it.

Moreover, many women will inherit twice—once from their parents and once from their spouses or partners. According to the Social Security actuarial life expectancy tables, women outlive men by three to five years on average. Therefore, it can be presumed that single or married women or women with partners in the boomer generation will have custody of the Great Wealth Transfer before it is transferred to the millennial generation.

This historical occurrence is linked directly to both the victories in women’s property law reform by the first-wave feminist movement in the 1800s and due to women living longer and having better education, greater financial autonomy, and near equal participation in the workforce—all resulting from the work of the second and third waves of women’s movements. Other countries are on a similar trajectory. As a result of the successes of the first three waves of feminism, we are about to experience a female financial phenomenon that has never occurred in recorded history.

Mona Sinha, Former Board Chair of Women Moving Millions and Global Executive Director of Equality Now, (pictured above) shares: “Unless women are economically secure, they’re never going to be equal.”

Angel Investor and former Women’s Funding Network Board member Jacki Zehner (pictured right) says: “Finance is the new frontier of feminism. Gender equity will never exist without financial equity. We don’t have to wait for men; we just need to mobilize women. My whole thing is getting more money into the hands of women.”

The fact is that women, far more than men, believe that gender equity is critically important. As more and more women are coming into financial power, what’s also critically important is that they wield it very differently than men historically have. Women give more of their wealth to philanthropy than their male counterparts: in single-headed households, researchers consistently find that women are more likely than men to give to charity. Today, the gathering threats against women are counterbalanced by an unprecedented opportunity to advance women’s rights rapidly. If channeled properly, women’s newfound collective financial power and unique philanthropic instincts will propel gender equity efforts forward faster, more formidably, and more fully. 

As the primary funders of women’s rights efforts for the last five decades, and by being deeply embedded in nearly every gender justice effort underway on the planet, the Global Women’s Funding Movement has acquired a deep intelligence, the ability to detect threats to women as well as opportunities for equity that are invisible to most others. Dismantling patriarchal systems is dangerous. When women strike effectively at the root of oppressive systems, those benefiting from them strike back with full force. As women gain and exert their power in the most basic ways, like voting, uniting to confront oppression, or when they run for office, they are increasingly targeted, intimidated, and attacked. Currently, we are witnessing a patriarchal backlash at an unprecedented scale globally.

Violence against women in politics is now so pervasive throughout the world that it’s considered its category of gender-based violence. Also, the stronger and more autonomous women become, the more threatened and violent patriarchal forces grow. Patriarchal and anti-gender attacks today are profuse, both brazen and insidious, and extremely well-funded. These attacks, as always, seek to strike at every source of women’s power—their political power, their reproductive power, their financial power, and their collective power.

In addition to being guided by the moral compass of the Feminist Funding Principles, the Global Women’s Funding Movement is hawk-eyed to patriarchy’s sinister strategies, which women’s funds’ grantee partners are on the frontlines of resisting these forces daily in the U.S. and globally.

Tomorrow, we learn about: A Force More Powerful