The Most Powerful Women You've Never Heard Of

 Women have certainly proved their spirits in this male-dominated

world. Not only have they cut away from the stereotype, but they also

manage to come out shining dynamically in all fields be it politics or

entrepreneurship. While there are a few who are world famous and have

made their mark, foreign policy.com named the most powerful women

you've never heard of and the list includes:

Helen Clark (Administrator, U.N.

Development Program, New Zealand):

As New Zealand's prime minister, Helen Clark managed a decade of

economic growth and won three straight terms in her post after a long

career as a Labour Party legislator and cabinet minister. However, in less

than a year following her departure as Kiwi prime minister, Helen turned to

a much larger and more challenging stage. Since 2009, she has led the U.N.

Development Program (UNDP), the arm of the United Nations charged with

tackling the world's worst problems, from global poverty to corrupt

governance to health and environmental crises. Clark now oversees the

UNDP's nearly $5 billion annual budget and over 8,000 employees operating

in 177 countries. Cholera in Haiti and famine in Somalia may be far from

daily life for several New Zealanders, but Helen appears fearless. Her top

goal as administrator, she said, is no less than to eradicate extreme poverty

around the world.

Liu Yandong (State councilor, China):

As Mao Zedong famously said - they hold up "half the sky" but, women make

up just over 20 percent of the delegates in China's national legislature.

Former chemist Liu Yandong is the outlier: the only woman in the Politburo,

the 25-member influential decision-making body at the top of the Communist

Party pyramid. She is considered a close ally of President Hu Jintao, and

hence, has a good chance of ascending this fall to become one of the small

handful in the Politburo Standing Committee, the true ruling council at the

center of the system. Liu's politics differ from those of her contemporaries,

though some analysts think she favors increasing China's contacts with the

outside world. Liu, 66, has an honorary Ph.D. from the State University of

New York at Stony Brook and spoke at Yale University in 2009. Liu would be

the first woman in Chinese history to make it to the Standing Committee.

Lael Brainard (Treasury

undersecretary for international affairs, United States):

While Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's attention is focused on the

U.S. economy, tackling the brush fires of global economic calamity has fallen

to Lael Brainard. The Harvard-trained economist was born in 1962 and

raised in communist Poland as the daughter of a U.S. foreign-service officer.

She later went on to serve on the National Economic Council during Bill

Clinton's administration, working on the U.S. response to the Mexican peso

and Asian financial crises. During President Barack Obama's administration,

Lael has been consumed with Europe's financial corruption, shuffling back

and forth between Washington and European capitals in an effort to

convince leaders to prop up failing economies and to avoid further spread.

Lael has brought tireless diplomatic energy to the job.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Finance minister, Nigeria):

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former World Bank managing director, was

nominated by the governments of South Africa, Angola, and Nigeria to

succeed Robert Zoellick ,as president of the bank. By tradition, the spot has

been held by an American chosen by the U.S. government, but Okonjo-

Iweala thinks it's time for a change. "The balance of power in the world has

shifted," she said following her nomination, saying that developing countries

"need to be given a voice in running things." For now, she is more or less

running things in Nigeria, where she is in her second term as finance

minister. In her first term, the Harvard- and MIT-educated economist

received praises for negotiating billions of dollars in debt forgiveness with

Nigeria's international creditors and introducing a high-profile campaign

against corruption. This time her mission is made all the more difficult by a

campaign of terror by al Qaeda-affiliated Boko Haram militants. However,

the 57-year-old Okonjo-Iweala is determined to make Nigeria an attractive

place for international companies.

Mary Schapiro (Chair, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,

United States):

Mary Schapiro was the first woman appointed permanent head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and was bound to attract attention when President Obama nominated her in late 2008. She came to the SEC in the immediate aftermath of the $50 billion Bernard Madoff scandal and a market crash chiefly blamed on questionable financial practices and lax regulation. But Mary, who first held a seat on the SEC from 1988 to 1994, is no stranger to controversial politics. She left the SEC in the 1990s to run the biggest nongovernmental regulator of securities firms and spent the next decade going after industry insiders and critiquing Wall Street excesses. Ever since returning to the SEC, she has fought to re-establish public confidence in the commission, controlling an increase in the number of cases pursued by the SEC and arguing for the authority to impose higher financial penalties.

Theresa May (Home secretary, Britain):

Theresa May first came into the public consciousness in 2002, when her

Conservative Party was in the political wilderness and Tony Blair's Labour

government was at the peak of its popularity. That year, Theresa, a Member

of Parliament since 1997, spoke at a party conference and warned her Tory

colleagues that the public saw them as the "nasty party." The phrase became

a rallying cry for a new brand of Tory symbolized by May and her ideological

ally, David Cameron, who united traditional Conservative economic ideas

with moderate stances on gay rights and the environment. Cameron arrived

in 2010, at 10 Downing Street and named Theresa as his home secretary

and minister for women and equality. She's only the fourth woman to hold

one of Britain's four "Great Offices," which include prime minister,

Chancellor of the Exchequer, and foreign secretary.

Fatou Bensouda (Incoming chief prosecutor, International Criminal

Court, Gambia):

Over the course of Fatou Bensouda’s nine-year term, she will oversee cases

against the likes of Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo, Sudan's Omar Hassan al-

Bashir, and the fugitive Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony. All are

notable not only for the scale of their violence but also for where they were

committed. Each of the court's 15 cases so far has involved incidents in

Africa, which, by Bensouda's estimate, has led to a perception of the ICC as

a "Western court" targeting her home continent. A native of Gambia, she has

held multiple cabinet positions, and was educated in Nigeria and rose to the

international stage when she worked in the prosecution of leaders of the

1994 Rwandan genocide. Now she's vowing to track the world's worst

perpetrators, with equal passion, "in Africa or outside Africa."

Marisela Morales (Attorney general, Mexico):

After Felipe Calderón’s (Mexican president) attorney general resigned last

year, he desperately needed to prove his government would finally crack

down on drug violence, which has claimed more than 40,000 lives since he

took office in 2006. Calderón's new pick, Marisela, not only was the first

female appointed to the post, but also had an international reputation for

her hard line on crime. A career prosecutor known for combining arrogance

with a strong compassion for victims, the 42-year-old tackled gang violence

in Mexico City before taking the helm of the country's organized crime

agency in 2008. There, she helped generate Mexico's first witness protection

program, launched a program to reunite trafficking victims with their

children, and fired more than two dozen officials, including her predecessor,

for selling tips to a leading drug gang. In her first 100 days as attorney

general, a massive number of 462 officials in her office were dismissed and

another 111 faced criminal charges.

Kim Kyong Hui (Politburo member, North Korea):

Still, some North Korea watchers believe the real power behind the throne

resides with Kim Kyong Hui and her husband, Jang Song Thaek. She is the

daughter of North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung, the sister of the last ruler,

Kim Jong Il, and the aunt of the present leader, Kim Jong Un. Officially,

General Kim is the director of North Korea's Light Industry Department, but

because of her lineage, connections, and longevity she appears to have been

a member of North Korea's inner circle for more than 40 years. She and her

dominant husband might be instructing the country's untested young leader

from the wings.

100 days as attorney general, a massive number of 462 officials in her office

were dismissed and another 111 faced criminal charges.

Valerie Amos (U.N. emergency relief coordinator, Britain):

Valerie Amos, born in the former British colony of Guyana, was the first

black leader of the House of Lords and the first black woman appointed to a

cabinet position. As a British minister, Amos focused on efforts to lessen

poverty in Africa through debt relief and private investment initiatives. In

Valerie’s role as U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and

emergency relief coordinator, in over the past two years, she has

increasingly started showing up as a player in the world's conflict zones. She

has launched relief efforts in earthquake-stricken Haiti, seen to the needs of

Libyan refugees along the border with Tunisia, and visited war-torn Somalia

as it struggled with an overwhelming famine.

The other powerful women on the list are Ann Dunwoody (Commanding

general, U.S. Army Materiel Command, United States), Atifete Jahjaga

(President, Kosovo), Lubna Al-Qasimi (Minister for foreign trade, United

Arab Emirates), Gleisi Hoffmann (Presidential chief of staff, Brazil), Cecilia

Malmstrom (European commissioner for home affairs, Sweden), Ileana Ros-

Lehtinen (Chair, House Foreign Affairs Committee, United States), Peng

Liyuan (Major general, People's Liberation Army, China), Sri Mulyani

Indrawati (Former finance minister, Indonesia), Fayza Abul Naga (Minister

of international cooperation, Egypt), Marina Berlusconi (Chair, Fininvest,

Italy), Josefina Vázquez Mota (Presidential candidate, Mexico), Valentina

Matviyenko(Speaker, Federation Council, Russia), Viviane Reding (European

commissioner for justice, fundamental rights, and citizenship, Luxembourg),

Lindiwe Mazibuko (Party leader, Democratic Alliance, South Africa)and

Hanan Ashrawi (Member, PLO executive committee, West Bank).