What's the biggest emerging market of them all? I'll give you a hint: The answer isn't geographic but demographic. The answer is...women.

Women leaders are the new power behind the global economy, proclaims Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu's announcement of its second annual webcast celebrating International Women's Day. In developing nations, women's earned income is growing at 8.1 percent, compared to 5.8 percent for men. Globally, women control nearly $12 trillion of the $18 trillion total overall consumer spending, a figure predicted to rise to $15 trillion by 2014.

More significant, the majority of tertiary degrees are now being awarded to women. Highly qualified, well-educated and ambitious, these women are taking over the talent pool from Delhi to Dubai and bringing new urgency to the issue of managing diversity.

In a speech at the Hidden Brain Drain Summit held in New York last November, the Right Honorable Paul Boateng, the U.K.'s first black cabinet minister and most recently the British High Commissioner to South Africa, urged representatives of the 57 member organizations to overcome the obstacles placed in the path of emerging talents. "If you're serious about growth, if you're serious about innovation, if you're serious about getting a global reach, then the evidence tells you that you've got to overcome those obstacles," he said. "The imperative is to move from sentiment to strategy, to make the leap from survival to success."

David Fuller's view I have always felt that countries progressed or regressed in proportion to the opportunities available for women.