What happens when a politically regressive era for women collides with the largest wealth transfer to women in history?
Most of us working in philanthropy have heard of the Great Wealth Transfer — the twenty-year handoff of American Baby Boomers’ unprecedented $124-trillion collective wealth.
Already underway, most of this treasure comes from a tiny minority, with the top 1% of this generational cohort controlling about as much wealth as the bottom 90%. When combined with the usual racial, social, and geographic disparities measured elsewhere in the U.S. economy, this much-vaunted financial phenomenon could serve as little more than the latest extension of longstanding inequities.
However, there is a surprising dynamic at work, and it could be an X factor that puts these incredible resources to work in unexpected ways.
Some Serious Purse Strings
Like most generations, men of the Baby Boom generation (born 1946 to 1964) typically married younger women who live longer lives. What is new is the massive wealth these men accumulated. As they pass it on to surviving spouses and family, this will represent not only the largest wealth transfer of all time, but also the largest ever transfer of wealth to women.
A 2020 study from McKinsey & Company predicts that by 2030, women’s portion of this hand-off will be “of such magnitude that it approaches the [current] annual GDP of the United States.”
More recently, a 2024 study from financial research firm Cerulli Associates predicts a whopping 95% of the Great Wealth Transfer between spouses — an estimated $51.3 trillion— will go exclusively to women. Beyond that, women also stand to receive the bulk of transfers going to children and grandchildren, with their share coming out to an estimated $47 trillion.
Combine this with surveys showing that as much as 91% of high-net-worth women report giving to charity, and it begins looking like the future of philanthropy may be overwhelmingly female.
Ironically, this accident of history, gender, and economy is playing out at a time when recent policy and court cases have imperiled decades of social progress for women. That includes the loss of fifty-year-old federal protections for abortion, targeted cuts to funding for femaleserving organizations, and the rescission of national policies that prohibit gender discrimination (e.g., the repeal of Executive Order 11246, dating back to 1965).
Some are looking at successful women’s movements of the past for inspiration, especially the major social advances of the 1960s and 70s. It is in this fertile era of change—alongside second-wave feminism, Billy Jean King, and Brady Bunch episodes about Women’s Lib—that we find the birth of the Global Women’s Funding Movement.
A Brief Her-story
Organizations committed to women and girls captured about 0.17% of total giving in America by registered charities in 1975.
That statistic was a highlight of Mary Jean Tully’s, “Who’s Funding the Women’s Movement?”, a research paper put out that same year by the Commission on Private Philanthropy and Public Needs.
Despite a lackluster share of funding, several enormous gains for gender equality were well underway by the mid-1970s: The Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 prohibited gender-based wage and banking discrimination, respectively; in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Eisenstadt v. Baird guaranteed access to contraception for individuals, offering women new levels of autonomy and self-determination; and most significantly, the following year would see the landmark (and now reversed) Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision which decriminalized abortion and allowed women to seek full reproductive care in environments that were clean, safe, and regulated.
But the 1975 Tully study showed that, even as women’s legal status was catching up with men’s, the funding to support those who advocated on the frontlines had been lagging.
That newly visible tension sparked what is known today as the global Women’s Funding Movement. Throughout the world and over several decades, small groups of women philanthropists came together with their communities to fund activists, charities, lawyers, and nonprofits working towards gender equality.
As stated by authors of the recently published history of the era, The Uprising of Women in Philanthropy: This money was needed to fund the formation of feminist funds, cover the money to rent or purchase gathering spaces for organizing […] and pay for the essentials that sustain the feminist activists who show up for the fight.
The movement grew quickly, especially from the mid-eighties into the early twentyfirst century, in which nearly three-quarters of the world’s funds for women were founded. Established in 1996, the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana was a Hoosier contribution to this global movement.
The Big Payback
Groups that sprang from the Global Women’s Funding Movement spanned as much ideological territory as geographic, but a unifying goal of centering women in philanthropy proved to be an inspired choice.
Not only were women, especially women of color, disproportionately harmed by inequitable policy, but women also used granted funds in ways that often multiplied their social benefit.
The “women’s multiplier effect” has since been measured in several global studies on charitable giving. A 2024 McKinsey & Company report often cited by the
Gates Foundation estimates that every dollar invested into women’s global health yields three dollars in economic growth.
Meanwhile, a 2017 study from Georgetown University found that:
When you invest in women, they re-invest 90% back into their families and communities… [T]he publicized average for men is between 30 to 40%. Women’s superior re-investment rate can be found cited by the most diverse range of international donors, implementers, and experts…
The female multiplier effect is a testament to the load-bearing (and often low-paying) roles many women still occupy in households and communities around the world.
That includes many Hoosier communities. Last year’s State of Women in Central Indiana Report showed that women in Indiana make up large majorities of single-parent households and low-wage or unpaid caregivers.
And yet, since Mary Jean Tully’s study in 1975, the share of charitable giving specifically to women- and girl-supporting organizations has gone from 0.17% to just 1.9%. While that’s a ten-fold statistical improvement, women’s share of philanthropy still badly trails the larger need, especially considering women’s exponential value as funding recipients.
The Next Women’s Funding Movement?
The Great Wealth Transfer stands to route unprecedented assets to women, but what happens after that will ultimately be the choice of millions of individuals.
But if we consider women’s stronger tendency to give — and give more — alongside a tendency to multiply what they receive in ways that grow local economies, then a women-fronted philanthropy could be exactly what the future needs. And just in time.
This article was published within the August 2025 issue of the Women’s Fund’s Diane magazine.
