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和平
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ASIA
26 March 2014
Co-Chairs of Thematic Working Group on Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women

Asia's powerful business-women

Although only one Asian woman, Pepsi's Indra Nooyi (from India), makes it into Fortune's top 10 most powerful business-women, there are another 7 Asian business-women in the top 50.

Although only one Asian woman, Pepsi's Indra Nooyi (from India), makes it into Fortune's top 10 most powerful business-women, there are another 7 Asian business-women in the top 50.

According to Fortune, the world top 10 business-women are: Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors; Ginni Rometty, Chairman, CEO and President of IBM; Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of Pepisico; Maria das Gracas Silva Foster, CEO of Petrobas; Ellen Kullman, Chairman and CEO of Dupont; Irene Rosenfeld, Chairman and CEO of Mondelez International; Marillyn Hewson, Chairman, President and CEO of Lockheed Martin; Meg Whitman, President and CEO of HP; Pat Woertz, Chairman, CEO and President of Archer Daniels Midland; and Gail Kelly, Managing Director and CEO of Westpac.

And there are another 7 Asian business-women in the top 50: India's Chanda Kochhar, Managing Director and CEO of ICICI Bank (18th); Singapore's Chua Sock Koong, CEO of Singapore Telecommunications (22nd); Singapore's Ho Ching, Executive Director and CEO of Temasek (26th); Indonesia's Karen Agustiawan, CEO of Pertamina (33rd); China's Dong Mingzhu, Chairperson and President of Gree Electric Appliances Inc of Zhuhai (42nd); Korea's Kwon Seon-joo, CEO of Industrial Bank of Korea (47th); and China's Zhang Xin, CEO of Soho China (49th).

With 8 Asian business-women in the global 50, this shows that Asia's women are really a dynamic force in international business.

But the case of Indra Nooyi remains unique in that she is head of a global, rather than national, enterprise -- like the case of her Indian compatriots Satya Nadella, the newly appointed CEO of Microsoft, Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga, Sigma-Aldrich CEO Rakesh Sachdev, and Cognizant CEO Francisco D'Souza. India's contribution to global business is unique.

One missing piece in the puzzle of Asian business-women is Japan, the region's second biggest economy and the original Asian miracle, for which there was no representative among the world's most powerful business-women. Social progress is still lagging the economy, in the land of the rising sun.

Author

John West
Executive Director
Asian Century Institute
www.asiancenturyinstitute.com
Tags: asia, asian business-women, Fortune, Indra Nooyi

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