MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mrs. Kirchner plummets to position 68 among most powerful women list

US First Lady, Michelle Obama tops the rankings

Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner plummeted to the No. 68 spot on this year's “The World's 100 Most Powerful Women” list made by US business magazine Forbes in New York, down from her No 11 position last year.

The list shows US First Lady, Michelle Obama, at top of the rankings, while the Argentine Head of State is above female leaders such as Finland's President Johanna Sigurdardottir (80); Costa Rica's Laura Chinchilla (83), and Brazil’s Lula da Silva's finger-picked presidential candidate Dilma Roussef (95).

For this year's list, Barack Obama's wife dethroned charismatic German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has hosted Mrs Kirchner in Germany as part of the Frankfurt Book Fair and an extensive political agenda during the past days, and had held Forbes' number one rank for the past fours years but this year fell to the 4th position.

On No 2, and just behind Obama comes CEO of 40 billion US dollars snack-food company Kraft Irene Rosenfeld, who jumped up from her No. 6 position last year. On No 3 is ‘talk-show queen' Oprah Winfrey from the US, while US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ended on the fifth position.

Singers Lady Gaga and Beyoncé Knowles, plus Ellen DeGeneres, presenter and actress are listed 7, 9 and 10.

More than half of the 100 names are US women. Merkel along with Australia's Westpac Bank CEO Gail Kelly (8) are the only non-US citizen women to be on the top-ten.

View complete list