There was a moment at the beginning of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s $400 million Cowboy Carter Tour, which grossed $400 million this summer, when the Grammy-winning artist concluded her performance of the national anthem with lyrics from “Blackbird,” Paul McCartney’s civil rights anthem — “You were just waiting for this moment to be free” — to segue into “Freedom,” her platinum-certified collaboration with Kendrick Lamar. As she sang, the megascreen behind Knowles-Carter displayed the words: “Never ask permission for something that already belongs to you.”
It was a statement about ownership in country music, civil rights, and women reclaiming power (as another graphic in that set showed), all in just a few minutes. But coming from someone who has appeared on Forbes’ list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women 15 times since its inception, it serves as a message to those who feel disempowered by the setbacks women faced throughout 2025.
This past year was, by many indicators, difficult for women: In the United States, nearly half a million women dropped out of the workforce between January and October, one of the largest declines in the country’s history. Only 54% of companies, McKinsey and Lean In note, currently prioritize helping female employees advance to senior positions (compared to 90% who considered it a priority just four years ago).
Meanwhile, UN Women is warning about the rise of misogyny online, reporting in June that the growing toxicity of the “manosphere” is seeping into the culture at large and has serious implications for the treatment of women, a warning that was confirmed in November when President Trump yelled at a female journalist: “Shut up, piggy!”
And yet, there are many signs that women are not staying silent and, in fact, are breaking records, from the largest number of women in the US Senate (a record first set in 2020, but recovered in the last election) to the unprecedented number of women becoming governors simultaneously (14 as of January) and the record number of female self-made billionaires (114 worldwide).
Also read: The most powerful women in the world 2025: Where do they have real power?
The 100 Most Powerful Women in the world are bravely assuming their roles. Sanae Takaichi, who debuts as one of the Most Powerful Women at number 3, was elected prime minister of Japan, becoming the first woman in history to lead a nation with a GDP of 4 trillion dollars. He has already launched with bold statements like this recent and controversial one, in reference to a successful anime and manga franchise: “Today I would like to conclude my speech with a famous phrase from Attack on Titan: ‘Shut your mouths! Invest everything in me!'”
Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott (No. 11) donated nearly $900 million to higher education, including more than $700 million to historically black colleges, while Melinda French Gates (No. 13) donated $250 million to more than 80 nonprofits, including more than $100 million to advance women’s health research. Taylor Swift (No. 21) reportedly paid $300 million to regain ownership of the master recordings of her first six albums, and AMD CEO Lisa Su (No. 10) struck a deal with OpenAI to build six gigawatts of AI chips over the next few years, in a deal that could be worth tens of billions of dollars and transform the AI ecosystem.
Driving massive change is something we seek when compiling the annual list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women. The 2025 Power List, like its predecessors, was determined based on four main metrics: money, media, impact and spheres of influence. For political leaders, we consider gross domestic product and population; For corporate directors, revenue, valuations and employee numbers were crucial. The mentions in the media and the reach on social networks of all of them were analyzed.
The result: 100 women controlling a total of $37 trillion in economic power and influence—through legislation, organizational chart or example—over more than a billion people. And each is an example of what it means to follow the advice Beyoncé delivered from the stage of Cowboy Carter.
Or, as Melinda French-Gates put it during this year’s Forbes Powerful Women Summit: “Women should be in any space they want, using their voice, their agency, and their resources.”
This article was originally published in Forbes US
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