Don't count on there being an overwhelming number of Alice Waltons in the world , because not even the top 1% is safe from gender inequality. According to the research firm Wealth-X, and as reported by The New York Times , only 12% of the billionaires in the world are women. Put another way, there are 294 female billionaires, out of a total of nearly 2,500 billionaires worldwide. It doesn't end there for the women at the top. Wealth-X also found that the population of female billionaires is growing half as fast as that of their male counterparts. The research is supported by a study conducted by Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez from the University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics. According to the scholars, the number of female billionaires tripled from 1980 to 2000. However, from 2000 to 2014, the number remained almost stagnant, growing ever so slightly from 9.2% to 11.5%. If this growth rate remains steady it would take close to a 100 years for women to achieve gender parity at the top 1%, Zucman told The New York Times.

"We are still a long, long way from gender equality at the top," he said.