Aug 28 2008
Top 100 Powerful Women of the World!
The recent Forbes report awarded the tag of world’s most powerful woman of the year 2008 to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It is the third straight year when Merkel topped the Forbes magazine list of top 100 women based on their career, economic impact and media coverage.
Sheila Bair, who chairs the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corp that insures bank deposits, debuts at No. 2 due to her increased prominence amid a stumbling US economy. The other ladies in top 10 included the chief executives of PepsiCo, WellPoint, Anglo American, Kraft Foods, Temasek Holdings, Areva, Xerox and Condoleezza Rice.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi is ranked No. 21 while Democratic US senator and former presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton dropped three spots to No. 28 but gained the most media attention of any woman on the list this year.
“Certainly she had been the Democratic nominee that probably would have catapulted her higher. She’s still an incredibly powerful force, she’s way more powerful than any other female senator.” said Forbes’ associate editor Chana Schoenberger.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the only other government official in the top 10, although she dropped three spots from last year to No. 7 as the Bush administration prepares to leave office in January after the US election in November.
According to Forbes report, 45 per cent of the women are based outside the United States.
There are 54 business executives and 23 politicians on the list, with media personalities and heads of non-profit organizations rounding out the top 100.
Gail Kelly, head of Australian bank Westpac, lands at No. 11 as Westpac is making a $15.6 billion takeover of St George Bank in Australia’s biggest-ever bank deal.
French Minister for Economy, Finance and Employment Christine Lagarde is at No. 14
While talking about the enlisted women in the interview, Chana Schoenberger said, “It’s inspiring to look at what some of these women have done and to listen to some of their life stories.”
One third of the women are new to the list, including Argentina’s first popularly elected president Cristina Fernandez and Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. While the women who drop off the list this year included Zoe Cruz, former president of Morgan Stanley, Patricia Russo, former head of Alcatel Lucent and Meg Whitman, who stepped down as eBay’s chief executive.
“A lot of the women who dropped off the list this year were for job-related reasons,” Schoenberger said.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the US House of Representatives, ranked at No. 35 while talk show host Oprah Winfrey nabbed No. 36. Yahoo President Susan Decker is No. 50 and Queen Rania of Jordan is No. 96.
For complete details visit www.Forbes.com/women.
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