Name: Forbes reveals the 100 most powerful women for 2025
Uploaded: 2025-12-10T21:13:35.871Z
Duration: 4 min 33 s
Description: Forbes has revealed its list of the 100 most powerful women of 2025. Maggie McGrath, the editor of ForbesWomen, joins CBS News with more details.

Forbes has revealed its list of the 100 most powerful women of 2025. Maggie McGrath, the editor of ForbesWomen, joins CBS News with more details.

Forbes has released its 2025 list of the 100 most powerful women, recognizing influential figures from politics, business, and the arts. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tops the list, followed by European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and Japan's first female Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi. 

The top five are all political leaders, while American women are more prominent in corporate roles further down the list. Newcomers include CBS News editor in chief Barry Weiss, and musician Taylor Swift is recognized for her impact on artist ownership rights. The list also notes a rise in women leaders in AI and entrepreneurship.

Forbes reveals the 100 most powerful women for 2025

Forbes has released its annual list of the 100 most powerful women in the world. Standing in the spotlight this year are dynamic leaders, innovators, and changemakers shaping the global landscape. The list features influential women from heads of state to AI innovators and musicians. Let's take a peek here at the top 10. You can see the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the top spot, followed by European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and the first female Prime Minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi. Joining us now to talk about this is the editor of Forbes Women, Maggie McGrath. Good to see you. Thank you so much for having me. So this list is absolutely fascinating. All of the women on this list are making great strides. But let's look sort of look at the top 10 here, including the very top ranked woman is Ursula von der Leyen. She is, I mean, she's a star, but she's also got a really important and incredible job. She, along with European Central Bank head Christine Lagarde, have been the top one, two for the past several years running. They have purview over trillions of dollars of GDP. They set policies that affect some 500 million people. Von der Leyen, of course, has been very instrumental in supporting Ukraine. We just saw that out of yesterday's meeting. So they're pretty steady at number one and number two. But as you pointed out, Sanae Takaichi, Japan's first female prime minister, like rock and roller, like motorcycle riding, a 4.2 trillion dollar GDP. She's made waves. But with her work, work, work, work, work statement in a country that has received criticism for a culture of overwork. But I think she is endearing herself by telling the citizens of Japan, I am going to work for you. And then rounding out the top five. I think it's really interesting. Our entire top five is all politics and policy. We have Georgia Maloney, the prime minister of Italy, and Claudia Scheinbaum, the president of Mexico. All heads of state, all not Americans. To find American power, you have to go to the rest of the top ten where you see a lot of corporate power. We have Julie Sweet, the CEO of Accenture, Jane Frazier, the CEO of Citi, Abigail Johnson, the head of Fidelity. It takes getting to the corporate world where you really see American power. What's so interesting is it kind of tracks, right? We are an ultra capitalist society. And so it would make sense that on this list, the women who appear are the heads of these huge capitalistic organizations, as opposed to the top five where you see heads of state, which we don't have yet in the United States. And who knows if we ever will. And given some of the public polling around confidence in female leaders, what we've seen in the sources that we've talked to are showing that in the G7, regular people have more confidence in female corporate leaders than they do in political leaders, which kind of reflects what we're seeing. I know there were some elections last night locally that perhaps provide some promise, but where there's real progress is really we see among the billionaires, we see among the founders, we see more women in AI on this list than ever before. And I think those are the pockets of promise. So joining the list, a newcomer to the list is our own CBS News editor in chief, Barry Weiss. And her story has been remarkable from being a reporter at the New York Times and before that, the Wall Street Journal, to where she is now having sold her company to Paramount Skydance. Absolutely. I mean, we at Forbes are champions of entrepreneurial capitalism. So as a founder, Barry is interesting to us in the announcement about Paramount's acquisition of the Free Press. It noted 1.5 million subscribers of which 170,000 were paid. That's a remarkable number. She's made so many waves. And I think if you look at media, I'm biased as an editor, but editors in chiefs reflect power in terms of what people consume, the news that they're hearing, the stories that they're hearing. And so we'll be watching her. Yeah, for sure. So will I. Taylor Swift is, of course, on this list, right? Number 21. She had a big year. She bought back her masters for roughly $300 billion. That is probably one of the most remarkable stories ever, that an artist can do that because they don't like the way that their music has been treated in the marketplace. She has had a ripple effect in some of the artists and singers I've interviewed over the years. I can trace more discussion about ownership than I could earlier in my career. And I think it's because of Taylor Swift. More young artists are talking about how do I own my masters? How do I own the copyright to the art that I create? And I think she takes she should have credit for that conversation. That's really very cool. Maggie McGrath, good to have you. Thank you very much for stopping by. Appreciate it.

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