| Kippreport.com

A woman’s world

July 1, 2010 7:45 by Katherine Azmeh

Women are changing the world.

From around the globe they constitute the emerging face of business, as they leave behind marginal roles to “to take their place in the economic mainstream over the next decade, as producers, consumers, employees, and entrepreneurs,” according to a new report.

And their greater financial clout is changing more than just the way a few products are marketed. Women are poised to become a billion-strong economic block, capable of altering global demographics and impacting societies through their increasing financial power in the world market place.

Academics, governments, and financial institutions are now waking up to the brave new economic reality – one that’s been brewing for years, and is now poised to alter the global economic balance. The decisions, needs, actions and activities of the female segment are set to define the economic future.

Take, for evidence, the findings of the UN Development Fund for Women’s latest research. It lends credence to the long suspected economic transformation in the making. According to the fund, investments in women’s enterprises in developing countries yield greater long term benefits to economy than investments in male-owned enterprises. In other words, on average, every female’s economic activity could prove to have a bigger economic impact than that of every male.

Increasing female activity also means there is a new face to the global consumer. Analysts say it will shift the economic power base and shape vastly different societies along the way.

“When women become more active economically, they tend to have fewer children. As the birthrate goes down, the social priorities of a culture change, and it becomes easier for more women to gain preparation and support for leading more independent lives,” according to new research report by Booz & Company.

Not only do economically empowered women have fewer children, the report contends, but they spend their money in ways that benefit the wider society.

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Tags: Booz & Company, ILO, UN Development Fund for Women, women economic power, women’s financial clout