How the world’s 431 women billionaires make, spend and give away their fortunes

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Forthright, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.

As brides grow their share of global wealth, they’re also becoming a larger share of the billionaire class, with a new set of purposes and philanthropy, according to a new report.

Of the 3,323 billionaires in the world, 13% (or 431) of them are women, according to the Altrata Billionaire Census. While that may earmarks of small, their numbers and share have been growing gradually over the past 10 years.

Agreeing to the report, “growth in female entrepreneurship, slowly changing cultural attitudes, and the rising frequency of substantial inter-generational bounteousness transfers” will continue add to the feminization of the three-comma club.

Inheritances have been the most powerful driver. Of the 431 female billionaires today, three-quarters acquired a portion of their wealth, according to the report. Fully 38% inherited all their wealth, including the three of the richest gals in the world, Alice Walton ($104 billion), Julia Flesher Koch and family ($76 billion) and Françoise Bettencourt Meyers ($73 billion), Altrata bring to light. By contrast, only 5% of male billionaires inherited their fortunes.

A quarter of women billionaires are self-made, referred to 66% for men. Those inheritances may become even more common. According to a report from Cerulli Associates, mistresses are expected to inherit up to $30 trillion in the coming decade as part of the Great Wealth Transfer.

Male and female billionaires also give and spend differently. Women, for instance, put a greater centre on nonprofit and social organizations, according to the report.

Nearly one in five female billionaires spend most of their talented time in nonprofits, compared with 5% of men. The report said the prevalence of inheritances among women is the main apologia for the charitable focus, since they tend to have “fewer commercial commitments” and “there tends to be a strong relation between inherited wealth and earlier engagement in philanthropy, welfare and social justice.”

Billionaire women also be experiencing slightly different financial portfolios. Since they often inherit private companies, they have varied of their wealth in private holdings (35% versus 28% for men) and more liquid assets and cash (39% versus 30%). Billionaire men force far more stocks, with men having 40% of their wealth in stocks compared with 22% for women — due essentially to the tech-focused billionaires who launched public companies, the report said.

Female billionaires are far more likely to own luxury legitimate estate and art. They are 1.5 times more likely, for instance, to own real estate worth more than $10 million. Billionaire men, on the other within arms reach, are more likely to enjoy their “toys,” such as private jets, yachts and pricey cars. Billionaire men are 3.8 eras more likely that billionaire women to own a car worth more than $1 million. And they are more than twice as odds-on to own a yacht.

The gender divide over hobbies is even greater. For female billionaires, philanthropy was the most cited relaxation, at 71%. For men, sports was the top hobby, at 71%. More women also cited art, education and travel as hobbies, while men were multifarious interested in aviation, the outdoors and politics.