The World's Most Powerful Women

We measure power as a composite of public profile--calculated using press mentions--and financial heft. This year, for instance, the woman with the highest public profile is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, No. 28, who garnered intense media scrutiny for her failed U.S. presidential bid.

The economic component of the ranking considers job title and past career accomplishments, as well as the amount of money a woman controls. A chief executive gets the revenue of her business, for example, while a Nobel winner receives her prize money and a U.N. agency head receives her organization's budget. We modify the raw dollar figures to allow comparisons among the different financial realms so that the corporate revenue that an executive controls, for instance, is on the same footing as a country's gross domestic product, ascribed to prime ministers.

Assistance: Laura Liswood, Secretary General, Council of Women World Leaders.

Reporting: Kate Macmillan, Tatiana Serafin, Emily Schmall, Allison Fass, Emily Stewart, Helen Coster, Heidi Brown, Devon Pendleton, Megha Bahree, Zina Moukheiber, Anne P. Mintz, Cristina Von Zeppelin, Naazneen Karmali, Soyoung Ho, Luisa Kroll, Kiyoe Minami and Anita Raghavan. Database management: Mitch Rand.