The research “Varieties of Economic Elites? Preliminary Results from the World Elite Database”, recently published in the scientific journal British Journal of Sociology, analyzed 16 countries that represent more than half of the global Gross Domestic Product and a third of the world's population.

The Portuguese economic elite is small and has few women: “There are 12 men for every woman in the universe made up of the heads of large private and public companies in Portugal, of national fortunes and of positions in economic and political regulation in the country”, concluded the study.

This elite is “highly professionalised, with a small proportion of large fortunes on a global scale, configuring an economic power structure more dependent on the national institutional context than on global capital dynamics”.

In Portugal, 44% of the economic elite were born in Lisbon and only 9% abroad. More than half have degrees in Administration, and, apart from Law, no one studied Literature.

“Women who own companies are heirs, that is, ownership results from mechanisms of social and economic reproduction,” said researcher Maria do Carmo Botelho from the University Institute of Lisbon - Iscte and one of the authors of the study, quoted in a press release.

According to the research, the “Portuguese elite is not particularly rich, compared to other national economic elites, and has little presence on major global stages such as Davos, the Bilderberg group or the World Economic Forum”, found Nuno Nunes, a researcher at the University Institute of Lisbon and also one of the authors of the study.

“In a world dominated by elderly men, the Portuguese elite is the third youngest, and the few Portuguese women are considerably younger than the men,” he added.

Portugal is the country of the 16 studied in which the fewest individuals from the economic elite were born in rural areas (15%). Almost half (44%) were born in Lisbon, 70% were born in the country's largest urban centers and only 04% in secondary urban environments.

It is also one of the countries with the fewest members of the economic elite born abroad, just 9%. In the United Kingdom, for example, 45% of the economic elite is foreign.

The Portuguese economic elite was collected in 2020 and is made up of 74 individuals. In the chapter on fortunes and business leadership, the three women who make it up – Fernanda Amorim, Paula Amorim and Cláudia Azevedo – represent 5.5% of this group.

With regulatory power, the four women present – ​​Gabriela Figueiredo Dias, Helena Alves Borges, Margarida Matos Rosa and Margarida Corrêa de Aguiar – account for 27%.

In political positions, in four ministries of economic scope – Finance, Economy, Infrastructure and Housing and Labor, Solidarity and Social Security – at the time (as at present) only one woman held the position of minister: Ana Mendes Godinho (replaced by Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho).

With a large weight of executive training and international programs in the studies of its economic elite, Portugal is in the middle of the table of countries analyzed with regard to doctorates, with 09%.

In Germany, the percentage is 36%, in China and Poland it is 27% and in the United States of America it is 21%.

“The Financial Times highlighted that the results of this study challenge some preconceived ideas: although they continue to be predominantly male and older, economic elites are now more educated, more internationalized and tend to reproduce themselves socially,” highlighted Maria do Carmo Botelho.

For the Iscte researcher, “academic training continues to be an essential access criterion for elites, but its nature and prestige vary between countries”.