Portugal has the highest percentage of women millionaires in the world.
Only 10% of all the multimillionaires in the world are women, and Portugal heads the list of countries by having 23.8% of the Portuguese multimillionaire population.
The information comes from a survey by conducted by Spear’s and a wealth consultancy, WealthInsight.
Portugal was followed by the Philippines which has 21% of its millionaires being female.
At the other end of the league table is Japan where women form just 3.7% of the whole. Saudi Arabia squeaked just ahead with 3.8%.
Countries making up the top ten include Peru (18.3%), Turkey (17.4%), Israel (17%), Spain (13.8%) and Italy (12.5%). Emerging Asian nations such as the Philippines (21%), Hong Kong (18%) and Thailand (15%) also feature.
Women make up 11.4% of UK multimillionaires, which places it 10th in Europe and 15th in the world. This is ahead of Germany which has 9.6%, the USA with 9.4%, Canada 9.2%, Australia 8.8%, while France has 8.5% and the Netherlands with 5.9%.
These all fall below the global average of 10%.
According to WealthInsight, it is a “startling realisation that most of the top 10 countries are emerging markets when it is Western countries leading the way in promoting gender equality.
The editor of Spear’s magazine says the results were unpredicted.
'It is worth remembering, of course, that women make up over half the global population, so we can't really say any country is gender-equal until its wealth is divided much more along those lines. What is shocking is that no country is anywhere near that yet.'