Scarlett Li, CEO of Zebra Media. (Photo/China Daily)
However, at the Media Creative Park, entrepreneur Scarlett Li said China is not necessarily such a benign environment for female entrepreneurs.
The 43-year-old founder and CEO of Zebra Media, which stages high-profile musical festivals, insists she has often faced open prejudice.
"I had dinner recently with a man from a very famous venture capital company in China and he told me straight to my face that he would not invest in any female-led business," she said.
"It is not the first time this has happened either. The first time was from a woman venture capitalist. At least they said it to my face. If I meet with another 20 VCs, they might not give me the real reason."
Li accepts such reactions are not necessarily discrimination but purely commercial.
"I think it comes down to economic calculation. They are working on the assumption that at some point you might have children, so the business won't be your main focus.
"You have to be strong in China as a female executive because your mother, your family and your peer group will tell you your main responsibilities are marriage and children."
Ma Li, associate professor of organizational management at Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, said economics factors can still play a big part.
"When employers are thinking from a pure economics perspective, it is better to hire males than females because females on the whole are going to work less than males because at some point they are going to have babies and a career break."
Paid maternity leave is 98 days in China, compared with 16 months in Sweden and 12 to 14 months in Germany, where it is possible for women to take up to three years' leave, if part of it is unpaid.
King at Grant Thornton said there may be an inverse correlation between the length of maternity leave and female advancement, with Germany having one of the lowest proportions of women in leadership positions at 16 percent.
"If someone takes three years away from work, there is a real danger of them falling behind in skills and there is also the issue of whether someone really wants to go back into the workplace after that sort of break."
In China many women now have prominent roles in business and feature in the Fortune Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Business internationally.
In the Grant Thornton research, however, China does not fare so well in terms of the proportion of women in senior management occupying the role of chief executive officer.
Only 7 percent of them get the top job, which is higher than the 6 percent in either the UK or the United States, but is well behind Germany at 11 percent and Italy and France at 14 percent.
