Angela Merkel & Hillary Clinton Head Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women

Forbes 100 Global Most Powerful Women

Forbes has released it’s annual list of the 100 World’s Most Powerful Women, based on three metrics: dollars, a traditional and social media component and spheres of influence. Forbes explains their criteria:

For money, we looked at the past year in company revenue for women in business and media, salary using the ranking on the May 2011 FORBES Celebrity 100 for lifestyle, GDP for politics and net worth from the March 2011 FORBES World’s Billionaires list for those with 10 figure bank accounts. Women from nonprofits and NGOs were rated on dollars spent fulfilling the organization’s mission statement.

The second component accounts for news hits (Factiva) and TV and radio appearances (Nexis) from the past 12 months, plus social media: Facebook fans, Twitter followers and YouTube views, all as of August 2011. Finally, we scored our candidates on their “reach” or the power bases they impact. Do they hold sway over multiple spheres of influence rather than have a single source of authority?

The top 10 women include Angela Merkel; Hillary Clinton; Dilma Rouseff; Indra Nooyi; Sheryl Sandberg; Melinda Gates; Sonia Gandhi; Michelle Obama; Christine Lagarde; and Irene Rosenfeld.

Three of the women are in business: Indra Nooyi as CEO of PepsiCo; Sheryl Sandberg as COO of Facebook; and Irene Rosenfeld as CEO of Kraft Foods.

Three women are popularily elected officials: Angela Merkel as Chancellor of Germany; Dilma Rousseff as President of Brazil; and Sonia Gandhi as President, Indian National Congress Party.

The remaining four women are in appointed or First Lady positions: Hillary Clinton as America’s Secretary of State; Melinda Gates as Cofounder, Cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; America’s First Lady MIchelle Obama; and Christine Lagarde, the new Managing Director of the IMF (International Monetary Fund).