Each year, Forbes magazine releases its ranking of the 100 most powerful women in the world. This year, Indonesia’s sole representative on the list is Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who has become a mainstay of the list in recent years.
Sri Mulyani ranked 37th on the latest list, which was just released yesterday. The 53 year-old is the current managing director of the World Bank, following her previous stints as Indonesia’s coordinating minister of economic affairs and minister of finance.
Forbes highlighted the reasons why Sri Mulyani is one of the most powerful women in the world in this short profile:
As the World Bank’s No. 2 since 2010 — and its most senior woman ever — Sri Mulyani Indrawati is tasked with bringing together the best ideas and people from the institution’s 188 member countries to achieve its dual objectives: ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. Before the World Bank, Indrawati was Indonesia’s minister of finance, as well as its coordinating minister of economic affairs. In a recent paper, she highlighted the need to close the opportunity gender gap, writing that globally, women’s labor force participation has stagnated or dropped, and women are 50% less likely to have a full-time wage job, with those who do earning up to a third less than men. And gaps in women’s labor force participation account for estimated income losses equivalent to a quarter of the GDP in the Middle East and about 14% in Latin America. Based on a global study, Indrawati also noted that when companies include women in their leadership, they are less likely to be embroiled in a scandal or fraud. Such observations, from the World Bank’s top woman executive, carry extra freight.
This is the fifth year in a row that Sri Mulyani has made the list. She ranked 31st last year.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel once again tops the list, followed by US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Closer to home, Myanmar’s State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi ranked 26th in this year’s edition.
Here is Forbes’ ‘The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women’ rankings in full.
