NEW YORK – Women in the largest emerging-market nations consider themselves more ambitious than do their counterparts in the United States and are keener to attain top-level positions, according to a report by the Center for Work-Life Policy.

At least 59 percent of women in Brazil, Russia, India and China describe themselves as “very ambitious,” compared with 36 percent in the United States, according to the study, which drew on surveys of 4,350 college-educated men and women in the so-called BRICs and the United Arab Emirates and one-on-one interviews. At least 75 percent of women in Brazil, India, China and the U.A.E. aspire to a senior job versus 52 percent in the U.S., according to the report.

Developing economies will expand 6.3 percent this year while advanced nations grow 2.3 percent, according to April projections by the International Monetary Fund. The BRIC economies contributed almost 30 percent to global growth between 2000 and 2008, compared with about 16 percent in the previous decade, Goldman Sachs said in a December research note.

“There’s this sense of ebullience that comes from a rapid period of change, and many of the women feel like they really have a chance to make a visible impact,” said Ripa Rashid, a senior vice president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, a New York-based nonprofit, and a report co-author. “They also have less battle fatigue than women in the U.S.”

Women in BRIC countries are catching up and sometimes exceeding male peers in academic credentials, “yet somehow this rich talent pool – as many as 26 million in 2006 – of highly qualified women has been ignored, overlooked and under-utilized,” according to the study released last week.