What a turnabout. Half a century ago feminism was all about celebrating women’s success. There was huge excitement about women’s progress in achieving rewards and riches in what was once a man’s world. The media was cock-a-hoop about how well we were doing, breaking through those glass ceilings to bring in the big bucks.

What happened? At some point the Powers That Be decided it was in women’s interests to play down this success. The public narrative is now all about women being badly off, struggling to survive in this dog-eat-dog world where men still come out on top.

Now all we ever hear about is downtrodden women needing assistance to cope with their unfair treatment. Homeless women. Poverty-stricken women living on meagre pensions or insufficient superannuation. Oppressed, disadvantaged, and always, always in need of more financial support.

Sure, there are many women in trouble, but the relentless moaning is actually a cover for a far bigger story. The truth that is being strenuously downplayed is that, overall, women will soon be sitting pretty, right on top in the wealth stakes.

‘Women will soon have more money than men for the first time in history!’ trumpeted Fortune magazine last week, explaining that women are on the verge of controlling the majority of personal wealth.

‘The unprecedented transfer of wealth to women is projected to reach $30 trillion in the next decade,’ said author Sara Lomelin, quickly passing over this extraordinary news about an imagined boom in philanthropy with generous women in charge.

In Australia, women’s ship has also come in. A recent report by JB Were – The Growth of Women and Wealth – predicts a ‘tsunami’ of inheritance heading in women’s direction. The wealth management company estimates women will inherit $3.2 trillion in the next decade, mainly due to longer-living wives inheriting from husbands.

But even when the wealth is transferred to the next generation, for some reason oldest daughters will benefit the most, say these experts.

Of course, women stand to gain not just through the death of their wealthy partners, but also as a result of divorcing them. JB Were looked at the approximately 10,000 High Net Worth couples who divide their assets each year and estimated that would result in a $30 billion asset pool converting to roughly $15 billion in the hands of the women. Not bad, eh?

In May 2023, Andrew (Twiggy) Forrest was the second richest person in Australia. Or so it seemed. But any man who has been through the family law system will tell you that a man’s grip on his assets is tenuous at best. After Twiggy and his wife split and the family law system had done its thing, he tumbled down the Rich List, dropping to Number 10 and he was overtaken by a new entrant – his wife, who entered at Number 8.

Nicola Forrest entered the Rich List for the first time ranked eighth overall, and is now Australia’s second-richest woman, with a $16.9 billion fortune.

Transference of wealth happens in ordinary families across Australia every day. The key point is that much of the wealth nominally owned by men in fact belongs to their wives if anything should go wrong.

So, it is easy to see why it is that our feminists aren’t shouting from the rooftops about this massive new achievement of wealth for women.

Naturally, women don’t even need to divorce their husbands or wait for them to drop off. The reality is, as economists will tell you, savings are simply deferred consumption. The objective of acquiring wealth is spending and here women really excel.

The hands firmly in control of spending are usually female. Some facts on spending:

• Retail: Women account for 85 per cent of all purchases
• Travel: Increasingly dominated by women where:

– 64 per cent of travellers worldwide are female

– 80 per cent of all travel decisions are made by women

– 85 per cent of solo travellers are women

– 230 per cent increase in travel companies dedicated to female clientele

• Vehicles: Women buy more than 60 per cent of all new cars
• Property: Slightly more women than men own property

The property issue is interesting because younger women are less likely to own property than men but in middle age female ownership takes over. CoreLogic Head of Research Eliza Owen speculates, ‘This suggests women may be empowered to buy property later in life.’ Yes, well, it just so happens that this empowerment happens around ages 25-45 when divorce is most common. Reminds me of the joke about ‘How many divorced men does it take to change a light bulb?’ No one knows, because they are homeless.

The reality is all that moaning about women’s sack cloth and ashes is a smokescreen for the true picture of women’s good fortune. Not only are many women ending up with all the loot when they find themselves on their own, but they are usually the ones in charge of spending the couples’ money when they are together. Not exactly a hard luck story.