Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, has reached the number five spot in Forbes’ top 100 list of the world’s most powerful women.
The list is mostly comprised of women in politics and business. Analysts looked at candidates, ranking them within power bases including billionaires, business, lifestyle, media, nonprofits and politics. The top spot was claimed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with Hilary Clinton, US secretary of state, coming second.
Sandberg was the highest ranking technology figure, hitting the number five spot. She was credited as being “one of the few prominent women in tech,” as she helped monetise Facebook and previously managed Google’s online global sales. She was also recognised for raising awareness for gender equality in the workplace.
Melinda Gates, Bill Gates’ wife, reached number six, due to her charity work in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which gave US$2.5bn to worthy causes.
Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president for Google’s advertising reached number 16 and Cher Wang, cofounder and chair of HTC, made it to number 20.
Ursula Burns, CEO at Xerox and a leader of the White House’s program on STEM, hit the number 27 spot.
Editor-in-chief of online news site The Huffington Post Arianna Huffington reached number 31 and Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo! made it to number 37.
Safra Catz, president of Oracle, came in at number 40 and Marissa Mayer, VP of Google’s maps and location services, reached number 42 on the list.
