New York: Forbes has released its 22nd annual ranking of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” for 2025, recognizing the most influential female leaders, innovators, and change-makers shaping the global landscape.
This year’s list highlights a new era of leadership, characterized by boundary-pushing innovation, geopolitical influence, cultural impact, and record-breaking financial achievements.
The women on this year’s list are defining the world in real-time, from building billion-dollar companies to leading global markets, driving scientific and technological breakthroughs, shaping public policy, and influencing cultural moments that are transforming the world.
Forbes evaluates these women across four key pillars of power money, media, impact, and spheres of influence and six sectors: business, technology, finance, media & entertainment, politics & policy, and philanthropy.
Collectively, the women on the list oversee more than $4.9 trillion in revenue, employ over 9.3 million people, and influence countries that represent more than half of the global GDP.
Notable Highlights from the 2025 List:
- Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission)
- Kim Kardashian (Co-founder of SKIMS)
- The Women of “KPop Demon Hunters”
- Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah (President, Namibia)
- Inga Ruginienė (Prime Minister, Lithuania)
- Julie Gao (CFO, ByteDance)
- Sarah Friar (CFO, OpenAI)
- Daniela Amodei (Co-founder & President, Anthropic)
Women Driving Global Change and Influence:
This year, 44 women hold the title of CEO, the highest share in five years, and 10 are founders, showing the rise of women building and scaling major organizations.
Women heads of state have also ushered in a new era of political power, with 16 world leaders on the list, including 8 serving heads of state.
Financial executives are commanding unprecedented authority over global capital. Veterans like Jane Fraser of Citi and Abigail Johnson of Fidelity are joined by a new wave of leaders including Kedia Gunjan of U.S. Bank and Tan Su Shan of DBS, marking a shift in who influences the world’s financial markets.
Entertainment leaders, with a combined social reach of over one billion followers, are reshaping cultural trends across industries and demonstrating the scale of modern influence.
2025 Power Women Stats:
- 13 billionaires on the list, with a combined net worth of $180.5 billion (up from $163.7 billion in 2024).
- Taylor Swift (#21) is the youngest individual lister at 35 years old, while Judith Faulkner (#53) is the oldest at 82.
- 4 women have appeared every year since the inception of the list: Christine Lagarde, Melinda Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Ho Ching.
Forbes’ Growing Initiative for Women in Leadership:
The 2025 list builds on Forbes’ expanding initiatives to celebrate women transforming industries, including America’s Most Powerful Women in Business, Most Powerful Women in Sports, and Forbes 30 Under 30.
The 100 Most Powerful Women list showcases the trailblazers across business, media, culture, and, for the first time this year, sports, demonstrating how female leaders are shaping influence and driving global change.
This year’s list serves as a testament to the growing power and influence of women across all sectors, reshaping industries, economies, and the cultural landscape globally.
As Melinda French-Gates put it during this year’s Forbes Power Women Summit: “Women should be in any space they want to be, using their voice, their decision-making and their resources.”
This message encapsulates the spirit of this year’s list, which highlights how women are not only leading across various sectors but are shaping the future of industries, policies, and cultures globally.
This year’s list serves as a testament to the growing power and influence of women across all sectors, reshaping industries, economies, and the cultural landscape worldwide.
