The World’s Most Powerful Women

The Worlds Most Powerful Women – Forbes.com has recently published an article entitled “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women”.

These women top a far-flung list that comprises 54 businesswomen and 23 politicians, with the rest being media execs and personalities and nonprofit leaders. A third are newcomers to the rankings; this reflects not only new top positions for women, such as Starcom MediaVest’s Laura Desmond (No. 55) and Enterprise’s Pamela Nicholson (No. 93), but also the increasingly global reach of this list, with more women from outside the US rising to worldwide prominence.

For the third year running Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, is the world’s most powerful woman. U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton (overall rank: 28) is the woman with the highest public profile, resulting from the intense media scrutiny of her failed presidential bid.

Here are some extracts:

Our annual ranking of the most powerful women in the world measures “power” as a composite of public profile–calculated using press mentions–and financial heft. The economic component of the ranking considers job title and past career accomplishments, as well as the amount of money the woman controls.Mary Ellen Egan and Chana R. Schoenberger, Forbes.com – September 2, 2008 – 1:04PM

At No. 3, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo is the highest-ranked woman in business as she expands the food and beverage giant internationally to counter a decline in Americans’ preference for soda and chips.

Angela Braly, the head of big health insurer WellPoint, suffered a setback when her downward revision of financial forecasts caused a stock tumble, sparking investor and employee ire.

At No. 5, Cynthia Carroll is leading mining giant Anglo-American to riches in the commodities boom. Kraft chief Irene Rosenfeld (No. 6), is slowly turning around the mac ‘n cheese maker in her second year on the job, scoring a big hit in China with a new Oreo.

In the last few months of her tenure, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (No. 7) faces a myriad of diplomatic flare-ups: an unstable Pakistan, a bellicose Russia and the long-smoldering Middle East peace question.

The Top 10:

1. Angela Merkel;
2. Sheila C. Bair;
3. Indra K. Nooyi;
4. Angela Braly;
5. Cynthia Carroll;
6. Irene B. Rosenfeld;
7. Condoleezza Rice;
8. Ho Ching;
9. Anne Lauvergeon;
10. Anne Mulcahy;

In total, the women ranked on this list control $US26 trillion worldwide. Just under half the women ranked this year are based outside of the U.S. Top countries represented include the UK (five women), China (four), France, India and the Netherlands (three apiece). Morocco has its first ranked woman this year: Hynd Bouhia (No. 29), director-general of the Casablanca Stock Exchange.

In pictures: The world’s 100 most powerful women

Interested? You can read the full The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women article here…