More women would follow MacKenzie Bezos by donating their fortunes. Too bad they can't make it rich

Our society and our institutions are stacked against female financial success – and it's not just individual women who are losing out as a result

I’m a few chapters from finishing one of the most compelling books I’ve read in years and I’ve never been more convinced of our desperate need to challenge the thriving patriarchy in everything we do. Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, in the most methodically candid manner, does exactly what its title claims. Using a smorgasbord of examples, the author spells out the brutal extent to which the communities we procreate, live, work and die in are designed to favour men and disadvantage women almost without exception. And in the vast majority of cases, no one's even aware that it's happening.

Criado Perez’s theses, though often built around powerful anecdotes, are all anchored meticulously in hard data. Figures on the dimensions of a smart phone, the schedule of a snowplough, the weight of an army pack, the floor space of a public toilet and the toxicity of nail polish remover all help to tell the bleak, enraging story of a man’s world in which women are forced to make do. I can only hope the book falls into the hands of at least one person who’s called the gender pay gap a "myth", attributed women’s work-induced exhaustion to poor personal choices, or dismissed the #MeToo movement as an overhyped witch-hunt orchestrated by the hysterical.

I’ll be gifting copies to those in my life who need it most, and I’ll read aloud like a pesky gadfly if that’s what it takes to enlighten.

Meanwhile, as gender data chasms around the world yawn wider by the day, we were served up yet another example this week of the difference between rich men and rich women. The richest of the respective sexes, in fact.

MacKenzie Bezos, the ex-wife of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, on Tuesday committed to giving half of her more than $36bn fortune to charity, joining a movement founded by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates.

Jeff, who's for years jostled with Buffett and Gates for the top spot, is currently believed to be the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of around $114bn according to Bloomberg. And yet it was his former wife who pledged, in a statement that verged on the poetic, to support Buffett and the Gates family in their 2010 founded campaign which calls for the world's wealthiest to give away more than half their fortunes during their lifetimes or in their wills.

“In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me, I have a disproportionate amount of money to share,” MacKenzie said, frankly and humbly. “My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care.”

According to Forbes, she became the world’s third richest woman when she and Jeff announced their divorce settlement on 4 April. As was to be expected, Jeff – from whom MacKenzie amicably split after a 25 year marriage, amid media speculation the Amazon founder had cheated – was quick to complement his ex-partner's gesture. “MacKenzie is going to be amazing and thoughtful and effective at philanthropy, and I’m proud of her,” he fawned on Twitter, adding: “Her letter is so beautiful. Go get ’em MacKenzie.”

But while Jeff is no doubt aware that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, he chose to sit this one out, joining several fellow top ten Bloomberg Index billionaires (head of French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH Bernard Arnault, Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, Zara founder Amancio Ortega and Google co-founder Larry Page) on the sidelines.

At this point you may ask what the invisible gender-data gap has to do with the actions of a profusely charitable Princeton graduate-turned-novelist divorcee.

The answer is simple: a corporate, financial and social system not unceasingly stacked against women would lead to a world in which the nine richest people on the planet are not all men.

Raising awareness of the gender-pay gap, for example, may eventually mean in time that women's access to financial services becomes equal to me in the 60 per cent of countries examined in a recent report by the World Economic Forum where that is not currently the case. And it might mean that, among the 29 countries for which figures are available, women no longer spend on average twice as much time on housework and other unpaid activities than men.

Those scenarios could also increase charitable giving markedly. Numerous studies have shown that women are consistently more likely to be charitable than men – but, obviously, only if they can afford to be.

A 2018 US Trust study, published in collaboration with the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, revealed that 93 per cent of high-net-worth women – defined as those earning more than $200,000 or having a net worth greater than $1m when discounting the value of their home – gave to charity, compared with 87 per cent of high-net-worth men. Research carried out by the UK's Institute of Fundraising in 2017 also found that 54 per cent of women had given to charity in the past year compared with just 40 per cent of men.

Most strikingly, perhaps, a study by the US's Women’s Philanthropy Institute in 2016 reported that baby-boomer women gave a staggering 89 per cent more to charity than men their age, and that women in the top 25 per cent of income gave 156 per cent more than equivalent men.

A fraction of Jeff's income could change thousands of lives; 156 per cent more than a fraction of it could change even more.

So I commend MacKenzie for choosing to pledge, just as I applaud her for maintaining grace and dignity while most of the world's news outlets feasted on the dissolution of her marriage. But most of all, I commend her for showcasing how easy it is to be tremendously charitable when cash is almost as readily available as air to breathe, and yet, how few of the world's wealthiest men – and they are men – appear afraid of testing this theory.

It's yet another reason why it might not hurt to make the world a little more aware, a little more considerate and, dare I say it, a little less favourable to men.