If you’re a regular viewer of any of the NBC/MSNBC news programs, you’d have to been deaf, dumb, and blind to miss numerous segments presented recently as part of Maria Shriver’s “A Woman’s Nation” project. Based on The Shriver Report – a compilation of mostly essays and light surveys that chew over old material – the segments shed little light on where women are headed in work, careers, and family.

The one statistic that bears repeating is the percentage of women who are either the main breadwinners or co-breadwinners [Click to enlarge]:

During a conference call with bloggers (worthy of a blog post in its own right – can you see me rolling my eyes?), former Clinton White House chief Jon Podesta said, “We are very excited about this information. It just kind of snuck up on us!”

Really? Maybe you’ve just been inside that Washington bubble too long, Jon. As a girlfriend of mine said when I quoted her a few of the Shriver Report statistics, “What’s so new about that? We’re living it every day.”

The report you really should be paying attention to is much smaller. It was quietly tucked in the back third of the November 2nd edition of Newsweek.

Titled, “Hear Her Roar,” the article focuses on the financial power women hold in the global economy – the lead-in to the article heralded:

Working women are poised to become the biggest economic engine the world has ever known.”

Surveys, studies, and in-depth research by such organizations as Boston Consulting Group, Goldman Sachs, and the National Bureau of Economic Research reveal that:

• Women currently control $13 trillion of the world’s $18.4 trillion in consumer spending. That is expected to rise to $18 trillion by 2014.
• Over the next five years, $5 trillion in new female-earned income will come online.
• A narrowing wage gap and rising female employment means that women will drive the shopping process even more than before.
• The new generation of women (with better equality in education and wages), will fill more Fortune 500 CEO positions – rising from today’s 38 to more than 100 in the next ten years.

These facts alone have strong implications – for hiring (wages and promotion), human resources (flexibility in time, work space, and career track), product development, marketing and advertising.

The products, services, advertising message, and customer experience you create for your customers are about to become more important than ever.

You need to start thinking more about transparency, authenticity, and writing to different types of female customers.

Just because it snuck up on Maria Shriver and Jon Podesta, doesn’t mean you have to let it sneak up on you.