A Century of Financial Rights: What Women Have Gained in 100 Years—and What 2025 Lets Them Claim
Over the last century, women’s progress in finance has been driven by a simple but revolutionary shift: from being treated as a dependent in law and in markets to being recognized as a full economic actor. The milestones weren’t only symbolic—they changed who could sign contracts, own assets, borrow money, build companies, invest, and pass wealth on.
By 2025, women can credibly claim major wins in legal autonomy, asset ownership, investment access, and wealth transfer power—even while gaps in pay, capital access, and representation at the top remain.
1) Buying property: from restricted autonomy to visible ownership
In much of the world, the key legal leap was women’s full contractual capacity—because you cannot reliably buy property if you cannot reliably sign and enforce contracts.
Switzerland is a striking example of how recent “normality” is: until the 1980s, Swiss matrimonial law placed the man as head of household, and women could lose fundamental freedoms on marriage—needing their husband’s consent for things like opening a bank account or working outside the home. (Swiss Parliament)
What 2025 makes clear: women don’t just have property rights in law; they are increasingly visible as owners. In the U.S., analysis of 2022 Census-based data found single women owned 58% of homes owned by unmarried Americans (vs. 42% for single men)—a powerful snapshot of women’s role in private real-estate wealth. (Pew Research Center)
2) Sole mortgage rights: “my signature is enough”
Mortgage access is where legal equality meets financial institutions. Even after formal equality, discrimination in credit markets persisted—so modern consumer-credit protections mattered.
In the U.S., the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) prohibits creditors from discriminating based on sex or marital status (among other factors), creating a clear legal backbone for women to obtain credit—including mortgages—on their own merits. (Department of Justice)
In Switzerland (again, as a reminder of how recent autonomy can be), the shift away from the husband’s “permission” model is explicitly documented in official history of the matrimonial law reforms. (Swiss Parliament)
What women can claim in 2025: in most developed markets, the “permission problem” is no longer legal—it’s structural (income trajectories, part-time penalties, care work, risk scoring). That matters, because it shifts the debate from rights to systems.
3) Stock market access: participation is no longer niche
Access to brokerage accounts and public markets is a modern marker of financial agency. Women’s participation has been accelerating.
Fidelity’s 2024 Women & Investing research reported that 71% of women own investments in the stock market, and highlighted a sharp year-over-year rise in participation. (Fidelity Newsroom)
What 2025 makes clear: the conversation has moved from “should women invest?” to “how do women invest strategically—early, consistently, and confidently?”
4) How much capital women control—and how fast it’s rising
A defining 2025 trend is not only women earning more, but women controlling more investable wealth.
McKinsey reports that in Europe, assets controlled by women grew from $4.6 trillion (2018) to $6.6 trillion (2023)—expanding from 32% to 38% of total EU AUM—and projects further growth toward 2030. (McKinsey & Company)
This growth is the foundation for everything else: more investing, more entrepreneurship, more property ownership, more philanthropy—and more negotiating power with financial institutions.
5) Inheritance: the quiet wealth revolution
The biggest wealth shift of the next decades will come not only from salaries or investing returns—but from inheritance.
Cerulli projects $124 trillion in wealth transfers through 2048 in the U.S. context, including $54 trillion in spousal transfers—more than 95% going to women, with nearly $40 trillion expected to go to widowed women. (Cerulli Associates)
Why this is a 2025 “win”: women are increasingly the chief asset managers of households—often after widowhood—and the industry is being forced to adapt.
(Global totals are harder to measure consistently across jurisdictions, but the U.S. figures alone show how enormous the shift is.)
6) Female startup financing: growing volumes, stubborn shares
Women founders are raising more in absolute terms, but their share of venture capital remains volatile and often structurally constrained.
Europe 2025: PitchBook reports women-founded startups raised €10.9B in 2025, while their share of overall VC activity remains pressured. (PitchBook)
U.S. 2024: PitchBook reports VC deal value to female-founded companies rose to over $38B in 2024, even as share metrics declined versus prior peaks. (PitchBook)
A useful 10-year comparison (capital allocation pattern): UBS (citing PitchBook) notes that capital flowing to mixed-gender teams reached 24% in 2024—double the share in 2014. (advisors.ubs.com)
So 2025 is a year of “two truths”: more money is flowing—but the system still filters who gets the biggest checks and the easiest follow-on rounds.
7) Returns from women-led investing: underrepresented, not underperforming
Women remain underrepresented as portfolio managers—Morningstar notes women were about 11% of U.S. portfolio managers at the end of 2024. (Morningstar)
But performance evidence increasingly undercuts the stereotype that women are “worse” investors. UBS summarizes research showing women can outperform men in investing outcomes (often linked to lower overtrading and more disciplined risk behavior). (advisors.ubs.com)
What women can claim in 2025: the debate has shifted from capability to access and representation.
8) Women-led companies: profitability and market performance signals
When people talk about “women-led companies,” the best evidence base is often about gender diversity in leadership and its correlation with outcomes.
McKinsey’s “Diversity Wins” research found companies in the top quartile of gender diversity on executive teams were more likely to achieve above-average profitability than those in the bottom quartile. (McKinsey & Company)
MSCI found that companies with at least 30% female directors achieved 18.9% higher cumulative returns than those without that threshold (over a defined 2019–2024 window; correlation ≠ causation, but it’s a meaningful signal). (MSCI)
2025 headline reality: progress is measurable—but representation at the very top still moves slowly (e.g., women leading 11% of Fortune 500 companies in 2025). (Fortune)
9) IPOs in 2025: a comeback year that still reveals the bottleneck
If venture funding is the pipeline, IPOs are the scoreboard. And in 2025 the scoreboard still shows a bottleneck.
A Fortune analysis of IPO-related filings (early August 2025) found nearly 88% of firms had one or no women on their boards, and 93% had one or no women in the C-suite—a blunt reminder that public markets still reflect earlier pipeline inequities. (Fortune)
What women can claim in 2025: the issue is no longer invisible—it is quantified, named, and increasingly priced into governance expectations.
10) Voting rights: the political engine behind financial rights
Financial rights expand fastest when political rights exist—because labor law, family law, education policy, tax rules, and anti-discrimination frameworks follow.
In Switzerland, women won the federal right to vote on February 7, 1971—meaning that as of 2025, Swiss women have had federal voting rights for 54 years. (bar.admin.ch)
(Globally, the timeline varies widely—from New Zealand in 1893 to much later in parts of Europe and elsewhere.)
11) Pay gap trends: progress, but not victory
Pay equity is the financial “fuel line”: it determines how quickly women can accumulate assets, qualify for credit, and invest.
Switzerland (FSO series): the gender pay gap (median-based) narrowed markedly over the last decade: 2014: 16.6% → 2016: 15.1% → 2018: 11.5% → 2020: 10.8% → 2022: 9.5% → 2024: 8.4%. (BFS)
EU: Eurostat shows the EU-average fell from 16% (2013) to 12% (2023). (European Commission)
U.S.: Pew reports women earned 85% of what men earned in 2024 (median hourly earnings). (Pew Research Center)
The honest 2025 summary
Women can legitimately claim that the last 100 years created—and 2025 confirms—four major financial realities:
Autonomy is structural now (contracts, bank accounts, credit, investing access). (Swiss Parliament)
Ownership is visible (property and wealth control are rising). (Pew Research Center)
Capital is shifting (inheritance + growing AUM control changes the center of gravity). (Cerulli Associates)
Performance arguments have data behind them (profitability correlations and return patterns are documented). (McKinsey & Company)
And the remaining fight is increasingly about: who gets funded, who gets promoted, and who gets included in the rooms where capital decisions are made—not about whether women belong there.