Research has shown that more Chinese women are becoming entrepreneurs. A recent report by the Xinhua News Agency on 4 July 2002 claims that women entrepreneurs make up about 20 percent of all the entrepreneurs in China. It has also been estimated that in China, among the micro-entrepreneurs, fully half are women (McEwen 1994, 340). This is a phenomenon that is happening in many developing countries. Legal changes in marriage rights and a higher level of literacy have granted women access to markets and networks traditionally closed to them. Lower birth rates and changes in gender role expectations have also impacted women's long-term career development. More recently, the restructuring of industry, urbanization and the emergence of new service industries, such as tourism, health care and insurance, have also given women more opportunities to become entrepreneurs (Cooke Fang 2004).

While such numerical significance of women in the business field is a new phenomenon, this has long been the case in the religious field. Gender imbalance in religious participation is often the case in many societies. In China, for example, it is estimated that 80 percent of Christians are women; this ratio is approximately the same in the house church networks and state-sanctioned churches or networks of urban fellowship groups (Aikman 2003). The consequence of this fact, that is, the growing importance of women in both business and religious fields, is the great importance of women in our discussion on Christian businesspeople in China.