It’s still a man’s world, and the Forbes lists prove this

Last week, Forbes published its annual list of the World’s Most Powerful Women. And while it lacks the sheer mesmeric vulgarity of the Rich List it does have a certain morbid fascination as an exercise in quantifying power. Forbes does provide an indication of how it carries out its rankings – candidates are rated on their news hits and TV appearances, their net worth or that of their countries or business and their ‘impact’ (the trickiest one to rate) – but there’s still an undeniably arbitrary aspect to it.

Melinda Gates, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Sheryl Sandberg (of Facebook) and Christine Lagarde are rated 3-7 in the list, in that order, but we’d be none the wiser if the order was juggled around. I mean, Melinda versus Michelle: it’s not like with like, is it, except to the extent that both of them exercise what power they have by virtue of their husbands.