The Wall Street Journal Asia - Ten women to watch in Asia

A single, global list of Women to Watch doesn t do justice to the growing influence of Asia s women business leaders. In addition to the global list that appears in this report, we have compiled a list of Asia-based women, focusing on those having an impact in business now or who will be influential in the years ahead. A women s rights activist in rural Pakistan, a philantrophist favoring educational reform, a developer of hip office buildings and a shirt-maker who pushes environmental causes -- they are a diverse and interesting group.

Solina Chau

Director

Li Ka-shing Foundation

Solina Chau is emerging as a key player in Asia s philanthropy boom, steering one of Asia s largest charities, with an endowment rivaling the $11 billion Ford Foundation.

Started by her companion, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. Chairman Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong foundation has given more than $1 billion to causes including education and health care in China, stem-cell research in the U.K. and the Dance Theater of Harlem. While Mr. Li has donated for decades, Ms. Chau has brought more strategic focus to the organization by embracing the notion of "entrepreneurial philanthropy" and the idea that social investments should have measurable returns. The foundation s chief project aims to challenge China s rigid educational system by emphasizing creative thinking over rote memorization.

Ms. Chau, who is in her mid-forties, also heads her own foundation, the H.S. Chau foundation, which funds education projects for girls in rural China. Before her philanthropic work, she was a prominent Hong Kong businesswoman and top executive in Mr. Li s business empire. She also is a leading investor in Chinese-language media and Internet company Tom Group Ltd.

-- Jane Spencer

Musharraf Hai

Senior Banker

Citibank

Musharraf Hai was the first woman to head Unilever (Pakistan), the largest multinational group operating in the country, as chairwoman and chief executive officer. She is now country business manager and head of consumer banking for Citibank.

Pakistan s banking sector is one of few in Asia that allows 100% foreign ownership, and it has been booming along with an economy that has been surprisingly strong in recent years, despite increasing political turmoil. While politicians talk about the need to advance women s rights in this Islamic nation, Ms. Hai is among Pakistan s new elite who already wield tremendous clout.

Ms. Hai studied at London School of Economics and Boston University. She has credited her success in a conservative Islamic society to liberal-minded parents, who encouraged her to pursue a business career, and the fact that she landed her first important job with an international company. In a 2006 speech to a women s business conference in India, she said of her rise: "I was ambitious and driven by the passion to excel. I wanted to tread the unknown path, and do something that had not been done before."

A trustee of the Lahore School of Management Sciences, she has pushed to bring more women into business.

-- Zahid Hussain

Sri Mulyani Indrawati

Finance Minister

Indonesian government

Sri Mulyani Indrawati is leading a battle to professionalize Indonesia s bureaucracy.

Since taking office in December 2005, Ms. Indrawati, 45 years old, a former International Monetary Fund official, has set up special departments for large taxpayers to reduce opportunities for corruption. She has replaced key staff at Jakarta s largest commercial port and doubled the salaries of those remaining, a move supporters say has helped reduce corruption and increased the volume of goods handled by the port. She has balanced the budget, helping to propel the country to an expected 6.2% growth in gross domestic product this year, its best performance in a decade.

Ms. Indrawati received her doctorate in economics at the University of Illinois. She taught economics at the University of Indonesia. After the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, she became an economics adviser to former President Abdurrahman Wahid, and from 2000 to 2004, she was executive director for the IMF in Southeast Asia.

-- Tom Wright

Chanda Kochhar

Joint Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer

ICICI Bank

Chanda Kochhar is one of the most powerful women in Indian finance, in charge of catering to the cross-border needs of corporate clients at a time when international banking is booming in India.

Ms. Kochhar, who joined ICICI Bank as a management trainee in 1984, has been at the heart of the firm s transformation from a state-backed development bank focused on project finance to one of India s hottest financial players. She led ICICI s expansion into retail banking in 2000, making it a leader in car finance, home finance, credit cards and commercial-vehicle loans.

Ms. Kochhar, 46, became head of ICICI s international and corporate-banking business in 2006, where she introduced new products and technology for global customers and struck new alliances with local banks in the domestic market. "The 23 years with the bank has been a long, exciting journey where I moved from vision to execution," she says.

Promoted to her current positions in September, her responsibilities include oversight of the bank s global treasury operations, principal investments, trading, risk management and legal functions.

Ms. Kochhar, who holds an M.B.A. and has a master s degree in Management Studies (Finance) from the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai, is a theater fan and loves to watch her son play squash on the weekends. "I work 48 hours a day only by setting my priorities," she jokes.

-- Vibhuti Agarwal

Mukhtaran Mai

Activist

Mukhtar Mai Women s Welfare Organization

Mukhtaran Mai, a victim of a brutal gang rape in 2002, turned a personal tragedy into a powerful campaign for the right of rural women in Pakistan to be educated. A semiliterate villager from one of the most conservative areas of Pakistan, she is running schools for girls in her village and has plans for more.

Her story -- a book on her life was recently published in the U.S. -- has made her one of the world s best-known women s rights activists and an occasional thorn in the side of Pakistani officialdom. In 2005, she was barred from leaving the country following publicity about her case that embarrassed Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. She recently spoke out against her removal from a women s crisis center. alleging government corruption.

She has worked with the government to advance women s issues, too. Her lobbying for last year s landmark Women s Protection Bill, which changed harsh laws that punished rape victims as well as rapists, handed Gen. Musharraf one of his most significant legislative victories.

A much-needed infrastructure has grown up around her. One school has become three -- providing free education, school uniforms and books to about 700 girls and boys around her village.

To help finance the schools and pay for other projects, the Mukhtar Mai Women s Welfare Organization runs a dairy farm. On the drawing board: a health clinic and a resource center equipped with computers.

-- Peter Wonacott

Kathy Matsui

Managing Director and Chief Japan Strategist, Co-director of Pan Asia Investment Research

Goldman Sachs Japan

In a country where women managers are still rare, few have had an impact on Japan beyond their area of expertise. Kathy Matsui is an exception.

Ms. Matsui, a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. strategist and one of four female partners at the Japan unit, has written two reports analyzing how higher female participation in the work force could ease pressure on the Japanese economy as its population shrinks."Womenomics" offers suggestions such as easing immigration restrictions to allow in more foreign nannies and housekeepers. Government officials, who have recently come up with measures to retain women in the work force, have sought advice from Ms. Matsui.

Ms. Matsui, 42 and a mother of two, has talked candidly about her battle with breast cancer, putting the spotlight on an illness that still has relatively little awareness in Japan. She is now working on her next social project: raising funds to open a women s university in Bangladesh.

-- Miho Inada

Tarisa Watanagase

Governor

The Bank of Thailand

When Tarisa Watanagase took the helm of Thailand s central bank following a military coup last year, she found herself in the thick of battle: helping Thailand s economy adjust to a sharply weaker U.S. dollar.

Ms. Tarisa, 57, repeatedly has said she will act to protect the interests of Thailand s broader economy, even if it means upsetting financial markets in the short term. Last year, she alarmed foreign investors by introducing limited capital controls designed to halt speculative inflows into Thailand s financial markets.

A veteran of Thailand s central bank, Ms. Tarisa a decade ago oversaw efforts to clean up the country s debt-burdened banking sector after a very different currency dislocation -- the collapse of the Thai baht amid Asia s financial crisis.

Now, with the U.S. dollar declining, her goal is to help win Thai exporters some breathing space. "I must stress that the recent capital surge heralds the onset, and not the end, of the unwinding of global financial imbalances," Ms. Tarisa said in a recent speech. "There remains considerable room for a U.S. dollar correction. As such, the threat . . . to the economic and financial stability of Thailand is very much present."

-- James Hookway

Marjorie Yang

Chairwoman, CEO

Esquel Group

Marjorie Yang s business is shirts, but what gets her perhaps most energized is the environment. The chief of Esquel Group Ltd., the world s biggest cotton-shirt maker, is among the most active Asian leaders exploring sustainable-development projects.

Privately held Esquel, which has about $550 million in annual sales, has invested $50 million in green-related projects. Its factory in southern China, which makes shirts for the likes of Ralph Lauren, Nike and Tommy Hilfiger, is equipped with its own thermal power plant, an unusual measure in China where most factories run diesel-powered generators. Esquel also has a water-treatment plant for its factories in western China s Xinjiang territory, a small but important measure as the textile industry represents one of China s biggest sources of water pollution.

Ms. Yang, in her mid-50s, has a mathematics degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master s in business administration from Harvard University.

-- Mei Fong

Zhang Xin

Chief Executive

SOHO China

Zhang Xin, 42, is chief executive of one of Beijing s biggest developers of residential and commercial buildings. SOHO China Ltd. has come to dominate some of the most-prime areas of the city, with buildings that stand out for funky aesthetics. Ms. Zhang herself is a much-talked-about lifestyle icon.

Her first project almost a decade ago was on land in Beijing that other developers considered useless. She and her husband, SOHO Chairman Pan Shiyi, built towers that caused a stir for their unique design and multicolored exteriors. Beijing until then had mostly gray buildings. Last month, SOHO raised $1.7 billion in Hong Kong in the second-biggest initial public offering for a Chinese developer. The listing transformed Ms. Zhang, a former investment banker, into a billionaire overnight.

-- Jason Leow

Zhang Yin

Founder and Chairwoman

Nine Dragons Paper

Zhang Yin is founder and chairwoman of a Hong Kong-listed company that has flourished by recycling paper from the U.S. Last November, Forbes magazine put Ms. Zhang s wealth at $1.35 billion, making her the richest woman in China and the nation s fifth-richest person.

The oldest of eight children born to a military family from China s Heilongjiang province, Zhang Yin worked as an accountant, moved to Hong Kong with 30,000 yuan (about $4,000) and launched a trading company in 1985. She makes most of the strategic decisions at Nine Dragons Paper, while her husband and brother handle general management. Nine Dragons, based in the industrial mainland city of Dongguan, raised almost $500 million in an IPO in Hong Kong in March 2006. With plans to invest $800 million and more than double production capacity by 2009, Zhang Yin aims to make Nine Dragons the world s largest maker of packaging paper.

-- Juliet Ye