The richest women according to Forbes: a controversial list
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Forbes magazine launched last week its list America's Richest Self Made Women for 2019, with interesting results and abundant criticism
For Forbes magazine, making lists to order the richest people in the world have already become part of their brand as a medium. Their "Billionaires" list has become the standard to determinate who is the richest human being in the world. However, since this list is often flooded with men, Forbes would have to bring the multi-billionaire women into account.
Leer en español: Las mujeres más ricas según Forbes: una lista controversial
Thus the list America's Richest Self Made Women is born, which seeks to rank the richest women on the planet, but with one condition, it must be they who built their wealth, and this could not simply be inherited or belong to their family. This, then, would exclude from this new list the richest woman in the world, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, great-granddaughter of the founder of L'Oreal and head of the company since the death of his mother in 2017.
Who leads this new list?
The list is made up of women between the ages of 21 and 92 and the minimum amount of wealth needed to enter is $ 225 million dollars. 25 of the women on this list have wealth of more than $ 1 billion and almost half of them live in California. While 19 of them were born outside the United States.
The list is headed by Diane Hendricks, 72, owner and co-founder of ABC Supply, one of the wholesale distributors for construction in the United States. Knead a fortune of $ 7,000 million dollars and your company sells more than $ 10,000 million annually.
In the second position, although considerably less rich than Hendricks, is Meg Whitman, 62 years old. Whitman has a fortune of $ 3,800 million and began to reunite it like CEO of eBay during its formative years, of 1998 to 2008. Later it would happen to work in Hewlett-Packard and to occupy seats in the board of companies like Dropbox and Procter & Gamble. Currently, she also invested in Esports, with the company Immortals LLC, also occupying a seat on its board of directors.
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In third place on the list is Marian Ilitch, 86, co-founder and owner of the Little Caesars pizzeria. Ilitch operates from the city from the State of Michigan, and is a significant owner or investor of some of the most important sports franchises in this part of the United States. She owns the Detroit hockey team, the Red Wings and major investor in the Detroit Tigers of the MLB.
A controversial list
This list, however, was the object of abundant criticism, both the way it works and what it says about our society.
First, it was criticized for the name and use of the expression self-made. This is a requirement that has never been made to evaluate the billionaire men, who fall on the list "Billionaires" regardless of whether they were themselves who built their wealth or not.
But the nickname self-made also poses other problems, as is the suspicious inclusion of Kylie Jenner, influencer, television star and owner of a makeup empire. Jenner, just 21 years old, already has a wealth of $ 1,000 million dollars and is the youngest entrant on the list.
The criticism that the list receives for its inclusion, is that, although Jenner played an important role in the construction of her brand and the wealth that brought her, she did so based on the visibility inherited from the Kardashian family, which enjoyed fame and considerable income throughout the first decade of the 2000s. It is difficult to determine how much of Jenner's success was derived from the privileged position in which her family was, but its inclusion aims to enhance her ability to turn this condition into a brand and in permanent personal wealth.
LatinAmerican Post | Pedro Bernal
Copy edited by Vanesa López Romero
