The FT’s 25 most influential women of 2024
19 min read
Influence is exerted in many ways, through political acts, creative endeavours, technological breakthroughs and community building. Whatever form it takes, it is defined by what it achieves — by changing the world we live in. Nowhere is this more clear than in the FT Weekend Magazine’s Women of 2024 issue, a list of 25 of the world’s most influential women, written by the world’s most influential women.
This year we celebrate women who are remaking the world we live in today, from Europe’s competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager, whose decade shaping the conversation about fair competition in digital markets came to a conclusion this year with two landmark rulings, to the phenomenon that is Taylor Swift, who upended an industry with the highest grossing tour of all time.
This special project was put together, over several months, in consultation with hundreds of FT journalists across dozens of bureaus, , her most ambitious novel by far, goes a step further, centring a pair of brothers and making their girlfriends the supporting observers, using quietly aerobic prose and point-of-view shifts to create something grand and intimate. It’s becoming even clearer that she’s not just the female voice of a generation, but the humane voice of a century.
Lena Dunham is a writer, actor and director
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Emma Stone
by Kathryn Hunter
On my first day on the set of Poor Things, the most extraordinary thing happened. A child with the body of a young woman arrived, walking with the stumbling but purposeful gait of a two-year-old, eyes wide and brilliant. It was Emma, in character. I had heard about the incredible Emma Stone, read about her, seen her in films. But nothing could prepare me for the talent I witnessed in person. Her skill and dedication were unlike anything I’d ever seen.
Playing Swiney to Emma’s Bella was a wondrous experience. I remember asking how we should orchestrate an ear-biting sequence. To my astonishment I was met with a confident, “Oh please, just go ahead and bite my ear.” Her performance will be remembered as a landmark in cinema history, and her awards — an Oscar, Bafta and Golden Globe for Best Actress — absolutely deserved. Emma is also a remarkable mother and businesswoman. She excels in every aspect of her life.
Kathryn Hunter is an actor
Elyanna
by Arwa Haider
Arabic pop culture felt globally amplified in 2024, an overdue mainstream awakening headed up by strong female artists and diaspora voices. Among them, a spotlight fell on the charismatic Elyanna, aka Elian Marjieh, a 22-year-old Palestinian singer-songwriter. Her summer snapshots included being invited by Coldplay to join their headline set at Glastonbury. Watching it, you were struck by Elyanna’s sweetly melodic Arabic vocals but also her elegant, easy-going confidence.
Elyanna has earned heavyweight music industry backing from the likes of The Weeknd collaborator and Universal Arabic Music founder Wassim Slaiby. She has high-profile fans, including Lana Del Rey, who styled Elyanna’s video for the dreamy track “Al Kawn Janni Maak”, an Arabic take on “La Vie En Rose”. Musically, she coolly holds her own, spanning R&B pop to zajal folk poetry. She made history at Coachella 2023, where she performed the festival’s first ever full set in Arabic. As she points out: “Even if you don’t understand what I’m saying, you can still feel it.”
Arwa Haider is an FT pop and culture critic
Charli XCX
by Gillian Anderson
This year, Charli has reclaimed the word “brat” for women everywhere, released an album that reached the top 10 in 12 countries, captivated Brooklyn with changing messages on a painted wall, and even influenced the US election, when she inadvertently set Kamala Harris’s campaign with young voters in motion. Charli has a clarity of vision and an unashamed audacity to act upon it. Throughout her genre-defying music career, she has shunned labels and customs in favour of staying true to herself. Charli’s clear sense of who she is and what she wants continues to be an inspiration to us all.
In a world where it can be exhausting to be the rebel, Charli can genuinely say, “I went my own way and I made it.” I can’t wait to see how she wields her power next.
Gillian Anderson is an actor and author
Adejoké Bakare
by Maria Balshaw
Adejoké Bakare is a very special chef. She gives us food that breaks new ground and excites the heart as well as the taste buds. In her restaurants, first a pop up in Brixton and more recently at Chishuru in Fitzrovia, she gives us conviviality. This is a place you want to meet friends and explore new culinary horizons.
Nigeria-born Adejoké is a trailblazer. This year she became the first Black woman to gain a Michelin star in the UK, for Chishuru, which is Nigerian-Ghanaian-global. Her restaurant is a fitting exemplar of this diverse, dynamic city. She is a proud bearer of her country’s and her continent’s culinary traditions, as we saw when she cooked a memorable dinner last autumn at Tate Modern. Only weeks after Chishuru opened she left her kitchen and cooked in honour of legendary Ghanaian artist El Anatsui on the occasion of his Hyundai Commission, “Behind the Red Moon”. The art and food were thrilling.
Maria Balshaw is director of Tate
by Naomi Klein
After her 1997 Booker Prize-winning debut The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy became a kind of self-assigning war correspondent. She sought out the places and people in India experiencing maximum pain, maximum injustice, maximum state violence: Kashmir, the Maoist insurgency, the aftermath of the Gujarat Massacre, nuclear weapons test sites, and the movement to defend the Narmada Valley from drowning. But she did not write about these conflicts and issues like a war reporter. She wrote about them like a novelist.
She brought her tremendous gifts as a writer — her bottomless capacity for imagination, her devastating eye for detail and for the perfect, unforgettable metaphor — to find poetry in protest chants and gallows humour in guerrilla warfare. So many struggles for justice and survival were better understood, more deeply felt, because she chose to help us see them through her artist’s eyes.
Roy was awarded the 2024 PEN Pinter Prize in April. In June, reports came that she could face charges under India’s draconian anti-terrorism laws. It’s a reminder that we cannot take any writer’s freedom or safety for granted, no matter how renowned. A huge part of what I cherish about Roy is that, like the best public intellectuals, she helps us understand our moment in history. This is hard. Change is constant and mostly incremental; big shifts tend to sneak up on us. How do we know when we are in a new chapter, one that requires different things of us? We know, partly, because our writers tell us.
Naomi Klein is an author, journalist and associate professor of geography at the University of British Columbia. She gave the encomium for Arundhati Roy at this year’s PEN Pinter Prize
Bisan Owda
by Heba Saleh
Feisty, emotional and articulate, video blogger Bisan Owda, 26, has become a voice of her people in Gaza, vividly documenting their plight under Israel’s offensive following the October 7 2023 attacks on the Jewish state. Owda has highlighted every aspect of the catastrophe, reaching millions around the world on social media, filming displacement camps, hungry children and shattered towns. She rages against Israel’s “genocide” and does not hide her tears.
Owda won an Emmy in September for her AJ+ documentary “It’s Bisan from Gaza and I am Still Alive”, filmed in October 2023, when her family sought refuge along with thousands of others in the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. A US group, Creative Community For Peace, tried to get the nomination rescinded, accusing Owda of ties to a US-designated terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. But the awarding body said it could find no link. Owda has also been awarded a Peabody: “For showing bravery and persistence in the midst of imminent danger, and for carrying a heavy journalistic burden as the entire world looks on.”
Heba Saleh is the FT’s Cairo correspondent
Gisèle Pelicot
by Leïla Slimani
The trial has already become historic. For 10 years, Gisèle Pelicot, now aged 71, was drugged by her husband and offered up to strangers recruited online. If the case fascinates it is not only because of the ignominy of the acts, in their magnitude and horrific banality, but because of the unique figure of the victim. After years of abuse, Pelicot has become a heroine, an icon of feminism. She could have had a closed trial but she chose to relive her suffering in public in the name of all victims of sexual violence, everywhere.
Each day in court she faced her husband and his 49 accomplices. Aged 22 to 67, they were ordinary men — journalists, fire fighters, civil servants. Each day, Pelicot resisted what they had done to her. She resisted the humiliation during the screening of the videos and during the accused’s petty excuses. Today, on walls all over France, you can find posters and graffitied images of her face, with those sunglasses, and one word: “Merci”.
Leïla Slimani is a writer
Yulia Navalnaya
by Zhanna Nemtsova
Yulia Navalnaya devoted her life to her husband, Alexei, the most powerful Russian opposition politician of the Putin era. On the day of Alexei’s death, while incarcerated by the Russian state, Yulia was at the Munich Security Conference. She called on the global community to unite against the evil regime. I met Yulia that evening and spent a couple of hours with her and a handful of her closest allies. I was amazed at how she held herself together under such awful circumstances. My father, Boris Nemtsov, was also a prominent critic of Putin and was assassinated in 2015 in Moscow while organising a rally against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yulia was unsure what to do next, specifically whether or not to enter politics. But soon she announced that she would continue to fight for her late husband’s cause. Yulia is the first woman to have become the most influential leader in Russian resistance, ending the decades of male domination in opposition. The strength of her character and her ability not to bend under pressure make her an inspiring personality.
Zhanna Nemtsova is the co-founder of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation
Simone Biles
by Anna Wintour
What is there left to say about a young woman who requires (and deserves) almost every superlative in existence to even begin to describe her? Simone Biles is, of course, the greatest and most decorated gymnast in history, as we all witnessed, again, this summer watching the Paris Olympics, where she gathered three more gold medals to add to the four she’d already won. Inside Bercy Arena, Simone was simply radiant with both determination and positivity behind her trademark smile, something that I and the rest of the enraptured crowd felt with a palpable, almost electric force.
Perhaps nobody has ever harnessed such talent and strength in such a small frame. She stands at 4ft 8in, but her accomplishments are larger than life. She has demonstrated her bravery in so many ways: winning the US nationals with broken toes on both feet, winning the World Championships with a kidney stone. She’s also embodied a different kind of strength throughout her life, speaking about her struggles with ADHD and anxiety, her early years living in a foster home and, perhaps most memorably, about the abuse she and so many other gymnasts endured under a broken system. Amid all this, Simone has had the presence of mind and the hard-won confidence to know exactly who she is and how inspirational she can be. “I’m not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps,” she said at her first Olympics, in 2016. “I’m the first Simone Biles.”
Anna Wintour is editor-in-chief of Vogue and global chief content officer of Condé Nast
Jasmin Paris
by Eilish McColgan
Less than 1 per cent of the UK population have finished a marathon. But there’s an even more elusive finish line no woman had ever crossed before this year. In March, Jasmin Paris became the first woman ever to complete the Barkley Marathons in Tennessee, one of the world’s most challenging ultra-marathons. The course, which changes every year, covers 100 miles and involves 60,000ft of climb and descent, about twice the height of Mount Everest. But Jasmin, a vet and mother of two from Scotland, has form when it comes to ultra-running. She won the UK’s 268-mile Montane Spine Race in 2019, breaking the record by 12 hours — despite stopping to express breastmilk for her baby.
These are monstrous feats of endurance, so to see a fellow Scot achieving them is hugely inspiring. I find the mental aspect of ultra-running fascinating. I don’t know what possesses someone to look at the Barkley Marathons and think, “80 hours of running? Yeah, I’ll give it a go.” Yet there’s something extraordinary about the people who do. They want to go beyond their limits, to experience something that not many others have. It’s not about speed. It’s about endurance. Jasmin has inspired so many other women to push outside their comfort zone and go beyond what’s deemed possible.
Eilish McColgan is a Scottish long-distance runner and Commonwealth Games champion
Anne Hidalgo
by Leila Abboud
Saying the name Anne Hidalgo to a resident of Paris provokes starkly different reactions. Some laud the capital’s mayor for her sweeping green initiatives. Others rant about profligate spending and traffic jams. But there is little debate over the credit that is due to the 65-year-old Socialist for helping to pull off a spectacular summer Olympic Games that featured events held against backdrops like the Eiffel Tower and Versailles.
Hidalgo, elected as the first female Paris mayor in 2014, has said she will not run for a third term in 2026. Rivals are already circling. She has put her mark on the city by enacting progressive policies like rent control and building more social housing, as well as setting an example for how municipalities can cut carbon emissions and plan for global warming even when international efforts stall — a hard act to follow.
Leila Abboud is the FT’s Paris bureau chief
by Lina Khan
Margrethe Vestager became the European commissioner for competition 10 years ago, at a time when policymakers generally viewed dominant tech platforms as benign, if not beneficial. But policymakers think differently about these companies in 2024, in part because Margrethe thought differently about them in 2014. She was one of the first law enforcers in the world to take action against these platforms for undermining competition, harming their users and stifling innovation — actions that initially garnered reactions ranging from scepticism to scorn.
But Margrethe had the courage to stand her ground, even under pressure from powerful figures. Now, governments around the world have followed her lead and taken steps to rein in these companies. Time has largely proved her right. She deserves tremendous credit for shaping a decade-long conversation about fair competition in digital markets, a conversation that has played a part in changing the global economy.
Lina Khan is chair of the US Federal Trade Commission
Rachel Reeves
by Mariana Mazzucato
Rachel Reeves’ appointment as the first woman to be chancellor of the exchequer marks a crucial milestone. She is also the first Labour chancellor in 14 years. The significance of her achievement is matched only by the magnitude of the challenge she has inherited. She needs to kick-start what is currently a low-investment economy (both public and private) that is not delivering for the British people’s living standards, land and waterways, or the country’s crumbling infrastructure.
As chancellor, she has already implemented some encouraging changes, such as adjusting the nation’s fiscal rules to better measure returns on public investment, and increasing funds for health and education. Her true test will be whether she can tackle the current economic challenges, but with a positive narrative — no more doom and gloom — in order to inspire expectations of growth and increase people’s trust in the wider policymaking process. She should keep in mind an important lesson from the US election this year: that if voters don’t feel improvements in their everyday lives, even successful policies won’t be rewarded.
Mariana Mazzucato is Professor at UCL and Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
Lisa Su
by Tsai Ing-wen
Lisa Su is a trailblazer. She started her journey in Taiwan, before moving to the US at the age of three. There she received her PhD in electrical engineering from MIT at the age of 24. She was one of the first to research silicon-on-insulator technology. Since then, Su has made pivotal contributions to new semiconductor technologies that have introduced new industry standards, from Texas Instruments’ Semiconductor Process and Device Center, to IBM’s Emerging Production division, to Freescale Semiconductor.
Su has shattered glass ceilings, becoming the first female CEO to lead AMD, the AI chipmaker based in Silicon Valley, and she has broken stereotypes in her industry. She received the prestigious IEEE Robert N Noyce Medal for outstanding contributions, and has championed diversity, equality and inclusion in Stem industries. She is a role model, as well as an example of perseverance and strength who inspires us all.
Tsai Ing-wen is the former president of Taiwan
Ursula von der Leyen
by Kristalina Georgieva
Ursula von der Leyen has led the European Commission through a period of turbulence with grace and determination. I find myself aligned with her on many fronts. We both believe in building a strong economy. We both believe innovation can raise productivity and living standards. And we are both proud grandmothers dedicated to making the world a better place for future generations.
The NextGenerationEU plan she spearheaded is helping EU countries transform themselves to meet the challenges of a shock-prone world. The REPowerEU plan bolstered Europe’s energy security and ramped up production of renewable energy in line with its climate ambition.
In her second-term, her efforts to deepen the single market could usher in a new era of opportunities for people and businesses in Europe.
Kristalina Georgieva is the managing director of the IMF
Kamala Harris
by Rana Foroohar
Kamala Harris never had an easy hand. With only 100 days in which to wage a presidential campaign, she had the heaviest lift imaginable, at the most crucial moment in American politics in decades.
We know the result, but it doesn’t negate her efforts. As the first woman of colour to be a nominee, she leveraged her passion for women’s rights, civil rights, the Supreme Court and a different US stance in Gaza to win over more younger voters and women. She changed the Democratic pitch from “democracy” to “freedom”, rebranding what had been a conservative word. And yet, she lost working-class voters in the places that mattered most as Trump solidified gains around the country.
This may have been because Harris failed to distance herself from billionaire donors trying to dictate policy. It may have been because she failed to win the conversation about jobs, tariffs and unions. Or it may simply have been that America wasn’t ready for its first female, minority president. Whatever the reasons, Harris’s candidacy changed the election, and the political debate, in 2024 and beyond.
Rana Foroohar is the FT’s global business columnist
Cristina Junqueira
by Luiza Trajano
Cristina Junqueira, co-founder of the world’s largest digital bank, Nubank, has always demonstrated a transformative restlessness. She began her career at the University of São Paulo, where she graduated in industrial engineering, and worked her way up through Brazilian institutions including Itaú Unibanco. Few know it, but our paths crossed when she was at LuizaCred (a joint venture between Magalu and Itaú). There, I was able to witness her commitment and attention to detail, and her constant search for innovation. Her ability to identify opportunities and lead change was proved with the founding of Nubank in 2013, revolutionising the Brazilian financial system and promoting financial inclusion.
Since then, Nubank has grown a solid customer base and had a successful stock market listing. Cristina transformed challenges into innovation and built solutions that address real market needs. Her presence on this list reflects the importance of recognising leaders who shape the future with courage and strategic vision, which are so important in Brazil.
Luiza Helena Trajano is chairman of the board of Magazine Luiza and of the Women of Brazil Group
Fei-Fei Li
by Melinda French Gates
Known as “the godmother of AI”, Fei-Fei Li is one of the most important leaders on artificial intelligence in the world today, and one of the most creative and compassionate scientists I’ve ever met. Not only did she help develop AI as we know it, but she is leading the charge to make sure it’s used to advance human dignity. For that to happen, more diverse perspectives need to be involved in developing and implementing AI technology, which is why she has helped students of all backgrounds break into the field through her non-profit, AI4ALL.
I loved learning more about Li’s hopeful vision for AI in her memoir, The Worlds I See. It’s a fascinating peek behind the curtain of a scientific breakthrough, as well as an inspiring personal story of her journey as an immigrant, daughter, student and teacher.
She’s now pushing the frontiers of AI to change people’s lives in tangible ways, such as enabling robots to deliver medical supplies and using augmented reality to help surgeons do safer, less invasive procedures.
I’m grateful that Li is at the helm of this revolution. AI is such a powerful tool. We need leaders with moral sensibilities like hers to make sure power is used to serve humanity.
Melinda French Gates is a philanthropist and founder of Pivotal Ventures, which is focused on advancing social progress and increasing women’s power and influence globally
Claudia Sheinbaum
by Gillian Tett
When Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo assumed the role of president of Mexico in October 2024, she made history in many ways. Not only is she the country’s first female president, but also the first former climate scientist to hold the post. Sheinbaum faces another historical moment: with Donald Trump about to become the 47th US president, she confronts an American leader who has threatened to slap 25 per cent trade tariffs on its southern neighbour to remake regional trade.
As former head of Mexico City, Sheinbaum has plenty of experience in dealing with tough challenges and is renowned for her steely character. Since she won the election with a landslide, she has enjoyed a strong mandate. But the task confronting her now will be momentous, since she comes from a leftwing party that embraces principles Trump’s team abhors. As a life-long feminist, she is determined to present a strong front against bullying tactics. Stand by for fireworks, and a big test of whether a woman cannot just lead Mexico, but do so in the face of Trump’s own version of Maga machismo.
Gillian Tett is Provost of King’s College, Cambridge and an FT columnist
Christine Lagarde
by Minouche Shafik
Navigating rough waters is Christine Lagarde’s daily bread. She learnt her trade as a lawyer, as a minister in France, and as head of the IMF and the European Central Bank. But I suspect it is her experience as a synchronised swimmer and scuba diver that has helped most. Central banking is all about maintaining stability through confidence in the system, and Christine conveys serenity while working incredibly hard beneath the surface.
At the ECB, she has shown strength and clarity while synchronising policy across the 20 economies of the Eurozone to tame inflation through a pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Her eight years at the IMF saw her contain debt crises in several Eurozone countries and stop contagion to the rest of the world economy. She put in place programmes to stabilise countries around the world with a more flexible approach to fiscal policy that protected the most vulnerable.
Scuba diving enables her to see things that others on the surface might miss — like the fact that climate change imposes risks to financial stability or recognising that having more diverse views around the table guards against groupthink. Her inclusive style of leadership means that she has motivated sailors on every ship that she captains.
Minouche Shafik is a member of the House of Lords
Julia Hoggett
by Sharon White
Julia Hoggett gives hope and optimism to women and gay people everywhere that you can be an outstanding leader and be yourself. The word “authentic” is so overused, but that is what she is. Whip-smart, articulate, open and brave. Walking into a room of business leaders in the UK, you can count the number of women on two hands. The fact that Julia is among that tiny number is wonderful.
There is almost no more important financial role in Britain today than the one she holds as CEO of the London Stock Exchange, making sure London can supply the capital that great companies need to grow. She’s not afraid to court controversy when she feels it is warranted, as with her call for a “constructive discussion” on UK CEO pay, which is far outstripped by US salaries. And at a time when so many leaders are retreating from action on diversity and inclusion, Julia does the opposite. She tells her own story of coming out as a gay woman with confidence, and works tirelessly to open up opportunities to talented people under-represented in finance.
Sharon White is a former chairman of the John Lewis Partnership
Ruth Porat
by Jane Fraser
Enter Ruth Porat’s name into a Google search and you will receive hundreds of results highlighting her accomplishments as a leader: a trailblazer at Morgan Stanley, a trusted adviser to the US Treasury department during the 2008 financial crisis and the longest-serving CFO of Google.
What the headlines won’t tell you is how Ruth leads. She knows how to instil financial discipline without stifling innovation. She leans heavily on data without sacrificing creativity. She knows how to invest for the long term without losing sight of what needs to get done today. And she believes in technology as a force for good. For instance, she’s currently leading an effort at Alphabet to understand how AI can detect and diagnose breast cancer.
I am always in awe of Ruth’s optimism, resilience and determination to get the job done. Ruth is a powerhouse. If you don’t believe me, Google it.
Jane Fraser is the CEO of Citigroup
