Europe's top women

Powerful women are entering all levels of society.

Many of the world's most powerful women have reached the top via non-traditional routes, according to the business newspaper Wall Street Journal Europe.

Europe's 10 most powerful women

Fabiola Arredondo

Marjorie Scardino

Clara Furse

Donatella Versace

Anita Roddick

Miuccia Prada

Margaret Barrett

Barbara Kux

Ana Patricia Botin

Elisabeth Murdoch

Source: WSJE

European business professors were asked who were the most powerful women in Europe, and the results - perhaps predictably - failed to include any female members of their own profession.

"Few of the female powerbrokers - though ultimately all tremendously successful - followed the traditional European route of home-grown company manager who slowly rises through the ranks of a big corporation," the paper said.

Rising to the top of the league; the former BBC employee Fabiola Arredondo, who went on from the commercial arm of the broadcaster to head internet company Yahoo's European operations, a job she has now quit.

Donatella Versace: A dedicated follower of fashion?

Other media women included Marjorie Scardino of Pearson, the company that owns Financial Times, who was knocked into second place by Ms Arredondo

As well as Elisabeth Murdoch of Future Network, who was ranked number 10, and Marina Berlusconi of FinInvest who was ranked number 23.

Elizabeth Murdoch: Made her name working for daddy.

More traditional women's areas of business were also represented with the fashion gurus Donatella Versace and Miuccia Prada, ranked number four and six respectively, as well as by Anita Roddick, number five, who made her money on combining soft values with beauty and make up treatments.

But the women on the power list are far from softies.

Ms Arredondo, for example, is a trilingual former banker, educated at the Ivy League university Harvard Business School.

Clara Furse: In charge of the biggest boys' kindergarten in the UK.

And she is joined by the London Stock Exchange boss Clara Furse in fourth place, Margaret Barrett of Merrill Lynch HSBC in seventh place, and Barbara Kux, central European sales director for Ford Europe in eighth place.

Other powerful financiers included in the top thirty list were Carol Galley of Merrill Lynch Investment Management and Lucinda Riches of UBS Warburg.

Telecoms professionals included Marianne Nivert of the Swedish incumbent Telia and Marie-Claude Peyrache of France Telecom.