The Third Billion

As growing numbers of women enter the economic mainstream, they will have a profound effect on global business.

A huge and fast-growing group of people are poised to take their place in the economic mainstream over the next decade, as employees, employers, producers, and entrepreneurs. This group’s impact on the global economy will be at least as significant as that of the billion-plus populations in both China and India. But its members have not yet attracted the attention they deserve. China and India each represent 1 billion emerging participants in the global marketplace, and this group of the same size, this “third billion,” is made up of women, in both developing and industrialized nations.