MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine president ranks 13 among most powerful women

Chancellor Angela Merkel is the world's most powerful woman

Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Chile's Michelle Bachelet figure among the hundred most powerful women in the world according to a list released Wednesday by the US magazine Forbes.

Mrs. Kirchner is number 13 and second head of government among the twenty leading women which has Germany's Angela Merkel again as the most powerful, and leading political woman. Chilean president Bachelet is ranked in position 25. According to Forbes the 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". A chief executive "controls" the revenue of her business, for instance, while a head of state gets the country's gross domestic product. The raw numbers are modified to allow comparisons across financial realms. An interesting case is that of US Senator Hillary Clinton (ranked 28) who is the woman with the highest public profile, resulting from the intense media scrutiny of her failed presidential bid. In accordance with current turbulent times Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the embattled U.S. bank-deposit insurer, debuts in second place as she tries to stave off financial panic amid a worldwide credit crisis. Another powerful woman which has lost ground compared to a year ago is US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who dropped from position four to seven. Number three is Indra Nooyi CEO of Pepsi Co PEP and the highest-ranked woman in business. Angela Braly head of big US health insurer Well Point is ranked fourth. Cynthia Carroll is leading mining giant Anglo-American to riches in the commodities boom. Irene Rosenfeld from Kraft is number 6. Ho Hing, CEO from the Singapore fund Temasek Holdings and Anne Lauvergeon president of Areva, France are in position eight and nine. 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.