
Private banks and indeed financial institutions of various kinds devote a surprising amount of time to churning out surveys of wealthy people’s investing habits, attitudes to risk, and spending. While some of these are quite entertaining, such as the Forbes billionaires list or the Hurun Report into the financial habits of China’s super-rich, many are just baffling.
The latest one just landed in the inbox with what would have been a thud in the days of paper. It’s from Barclays, and comes up with the not-very-surprising revelation that women entrepreneurs in Asia “still trail their male counterparts. ”Only 39% of employed High Net Worth females in Asia are businesses owners or entrepreneurs, compared to 50% of men, the new Barclays report discovers. I would have thought that was quite high, but what do I know.
Globally, we learn, 44% of HNW women and 49% of HNW men classify themselves as business owners. All things considered, not such a huge gap.
Female non-entrepreneurs earn more than their male counterparts, we are told. As meaningless pieces of information go, this is quite outstanding. Are they telling us that women wage slaves in Asia earn more than men? If that is true, that does sound like a story, because I would put money on the opposite. I haven’t seen any evidence that women have suddenly overtaken men in the salary stakes.
The report claims the gender pay gap widens for “non-entrepreneurs compared to entrepreneurs.” Non-entrepreneur women (£259,420 or HK$2.62 million) earn significantly more than non-entrepreneur men (£233,390 or HK$2.36 million), while male entrepreneurs (£264,828 or HK$2.65 million) make slightly more than their female counterparts (£260,227 or HK$2.63 million). Where? In what businesses?
Be that as it may, we then learn that female entrepreneurs in Asia “embrace the positives from failure more than their global counterparts.” What do they mean? Women learn from their mistakes and men don’t? If I told that to my girl friends who hold down jobs, run businesses on the side and raise kids as well, they’d roll about laughing.