Who is the Most Powerful Woman in the World?

GM CEO Mary Barra

Mary Barra is a name you might not know, but if the UAW strikes continue to stretch, is a name you're going to learn in the coming weeks.  Barra, a Michigan native, is the current CEO of General Motors, one of three major automakers in the United States.  GM, along with Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) and Ford are the "Big Three" auto manufacturers in the United States, and their workers (the UAW) are currently on strike.  Barra has been CEO since 2014, and is the first-and-only woman to ever be CEO of one of the Big 3 automakers in the United States.  We've talked a lot about the entertainment strikes here (we are a pro-union blog), and we stand with the UAW, but this invited us to get into one of my favorite parlor questions of late: who is the most powerful woman on Earth?

This, for many years, was a pretty easy answer.  From 2005-2021, Angela Merkel was the Chancellor of Germany, and while you could get a little bit silly by naming other figures as the most powerful woman in the world during that time frame, it really wasn't the case.  Merkel was head of a major global economy, a leader in a significant G7 country, and was the most important leader in Europe during an increasingly tempestuous political standoff between the United States and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But with Merkel stepping down in 2021 (and being replaced by a man), the answer to this question gets harder.  This is because it really comes down to a conversation about "what is power?"  If we're talking about political power, even then it becomes tricky.  The only female leader of a G7 country is Giorgia Meloni, the Prime Minister of Italy, but while this would put her in contention, Germany is not Italy.  She might be the most important female leader of a country presently, but if that country is barely in the top 20 most powerful countries in the world...how much power are we really talking here?  Other female world leaders include Droupadi Murmu (India) and Tsai Ing-wen (Taiwan) who represent significant countries in geopolitical conversations, but nothing that would rival someplace like Germany in terms of global influence.

Vice President Kamala Harris

After all, would a high-ranking female politician in the United States be more appropriate for the title?  Kamala Harris is the Vice President, and would earn the title in an instant if she were to be the President (she'd likely be given the title of most powerful person on earth in that case), but as vice president-it seems weird to say that being #2 in your own country would get you to be #1 in the world.  Same goes for other American politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Janet Yellen, or Amy Coney Barrett...definitely powerful in their country, but #1 in the world?  That feels off.  The same could be said for someone like Nirmala Sitharaman, India's Finance Minister, Yuriko Koike, the Governor of Tokyo, or Elisabeth Borne, Prime Minister of France (it's not the same as a British Prime Minister...otherwise she'd probably have ended the conversation).

If you go beyond the specter of individual countries, and instead move to global institutions, you find two major contenders for this title: Ursula von der Leyen and Christine Lagarde.  Von der Leyen is the current President of the European Commission, which oversees laws within the European Union, and is the first woman to hold the office (she was previously in Angela Merkel's cabinet as Defense Minister).  Lagarde is the current President of the European Central Bank, after previously managing the IMF for much of the 2010's.  This position manages the euro and monetary policy for the European Union.  Both of these positions are critically important in Europe, and either is a decent argument for the world's most powerful woman.

CVS CEO Karen Lynch

There's more to the world than political power, though, and this is where Barra comes in.  Barra's role as a critical negotiator for a major global company like GM puts her in contention for this role.  It's worth noting she doesn't represent the highest-ranking Fortune 500 company that is chaired by a woman.  That would be Karen Lynch, who is the CEO of CVS, but that's a solely American company without the same global scope as Barra has at GM.  You could make an argument that revenue isn't everything, but money is.  After all women like Adena Friedman (Nasdaq), Abigail Johnson (Fidelity), and Jane Fraser (Citigroup) represent major US financial institutions, and Fraser in particular (the first woman to be CEO of a Wall Street bank) should be seriously considered for the top spot if you pick someone from the business field.  Mary Callahan Erdoes is in contention to succeed Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, but probably isn't quite into this conversation until she does.  Other key world industries like healthcare (GlaxoSmithKline CEO Emma Walmsley), entertainment (ViacomCBS CEO Shari Redstone), and technology (Oracle CEO Safra Catz, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood) would all be in the conversation for most powerful in their industry, but in the world...I don't know if they get there.

Last but not least, there's global influence.  Power doesn't always come from established roles, but some that you invent yourself.  Melinda French Gates, Mackenzie Scott, & Laurene Powell Jobs have major sway over vast fortunes, all of which they are in the process of giving away.  When your charitable empire rivals the GDP of some world countries, it's hard not to see that as a major source of power, even if it's largely within the confines of your own checkbook.  Conversely, the most powerful woman on earth might well be the best-known ones.  I mean, celebrities like Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, Beyonce Knowles, & Reese Witherspoon hold not only significant sway in the entertainment industry (in many cases owning their own production companies), but also have a global platform that gives them access to hundreds of millions of people around the globe.

All of this is to say, there's not a right answer here-with Angela Merkel stepping down as leader of Germany, there's not a clear cut answer presently to "who is the world's most powerful woman?"  But as Mary Barra continues to stay in the news in the coming weeks, it's one that I'll definitely be pondering.