04-04-2025
How Trump's Tariffs Will Impact Women. Plus: Meet The Women In The $100 Billion Club
This is this week's ForbesWomen newsletter, which every Thursday brings news about the world's top female entrepreneurs, leaders and investors straight to your inbox. Click here to get on the newsletter list!
We begin this week with news that will not shock longtime readers of this newsletter: Women remain woefully underrepresented on Forbes' World's Billionaires list. But, according to the 2025 edition of the list—which we released this week—their numbers are increasing. Slowly. This year, 406 of the planet's 3,028 billionaires are women, good for 13.4% of the list. That's up a hair from 369 in 2024, or 13.3%.
The world's richest woman is Walmart heir Alice Walton. With an estimated fortune of $101 billion, she reclaims the title from French L'Oréal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, who now ranks as the world's second richest woman with a net worth of $81.6 billion. Walton also happens to be one of 15 members of the $100 Billion Club—those with fortunes spanning 12 digits—this year. She's the second woman to ever reach centibillionaire status, following Bettencourt Meyers, who accomplished the feat in June 2024.
To read more about the world's richest individuals, check out a roundup of newbies to the three comma club here, an accounting of the world's richest celebrities here, the full package here.
Cheers!
Maggie
P.S.: Speaking of Forbes lists: nominations for the 2025 U.S. 50 Over 50 list are now open! Head to this link here to tell us about a woman you think should be on this year's list. Full nominations criteria are on that page but the two most important bits to remember: We're looking for people who were born in 1974 or earlier, and we're looking for women who have never been on the list before, because we don't allow repeats!
Imagine hearing this feedback from a boss: 'This sucks, and so do you.' Well, Promise Phelon doesn't have to imagine—it happened to her, and in the years since, she's used it as fuel to build Growth Warrior Capital, the venture capital firm she started to invest in what she calls 'dangerous founders,' seasoned operators with decades of experience in jobs that are not glamorous. 'They're great at doing more with less,' Phelon tells Forbes. 'You don't expect them to be dangerous. They learn a lot, and they learn it quickly.' Phelon recently closed a new $26 million fund for the firm and sat down with Forbes to talk about what she plans to do with the dry powder and where she sees under-invested areas of the public and private markets.
President Donald Trump delivered the most sweeping tariff package the U.S. has implemented in decades, and economists are predicting that women will bear a disproportionate brunt of these tariffs. 'Single-parent families, which are 90% women-headed, spend about 40% of their income buying goods,' one economist told ForbesWomen senior contributor Erin Spencer Sairam. 'If you're doing a tariff increase at all, and especially if you're coupling it with income taxes, you're shifting tax burden away from the top end and toward the bottom end of earners, and it will fall most heavily on single moms.'
As part of the mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this week, the CDC is saying that the entire team overseeing Assisted Reproductive Technologies has been let go. What does this mean for the future of infertility and IVF research in the U.S.? Barbara Collura, President and CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, spoke with ForbesWomen editor Maggie McGrath about these questions and others that exist in the wake of the layoffs.
A new survey of business growth reveals that women are starting businesses at unprecedented rates. According to a new report from Gusto, women started almost half of all new businesses last year, a 69% increase from 2019 and a five-year high.
Phoebe Gates, the 22-year-old daughter of billionaires Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, launched a new podcast aimed at Gen Z female entrepreneurs under The Unwell Network, the media company owned by 'Call Her Daddy' host Alex Cooper.
Nike has agreed to settle a sexual discrimination lawsuit brought by four ex-employees, ending a protracted legal battle, reports the Oregonian. Terms of the settlement have not been disclosed, but in the original complaint, Nike was accused of violating the Federal Equal Pay Act, the Oregon Equal Pay Act and the Oregon Equality Act. At the time, the plaintiffs didn't ask for specific monetary damages. Instead, they sought the court to order Nike to pay its employees 'fairly' without regard to gender.
Last week, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck a fault in Myanmar, killing more than 2,000 people and shaking buildings as far as Bangkok, in neighboring Thailand. Dr. Lucy Jones, a renowned seismologist and also member of the Forbes 50 Over 50 list, spoke with ForbesWomen editor Maggie McGrath about what caused the quake and what we need to do to predict and protect ourselves from something similar in the U.S.
1. Ditch your five-year plan. Five-year plans can become pressure cookers disguised as roadmaps. They focus so intently on a future destination that they downplay the value of the present—and this tunnel vision can cause people to miss out on unexpected opportunities.
2. Retire rich, even if you're starting late. The first step to retiring rich at any age is getting honest about where you stand today. Calculate your current net worth by listing your assets and subtracting your liabilities. Clarity creates confidence and action.
3. Be blunt. If you feel that clarity is getting lost amid a lot of noise at work, it might be time to get straight to the point. Here are four things you should consider before you drop all extraneous niceties.
Out of the 406 billionaires who are women on Forbes' 2025 ranking, 113 of them are considered self-made—meaning they did not come into their fortunes either through marriage or other familial inheritance. Which of the following self-made billionaires is estimated to be worth the most?
