It was a quick decision for Wu Qiaoyun, 35, from Yunnan province, when she splashed out nearly 90,000 yuan (HK$107,000) on a new Peugeot 301 just before the Lunar New Year.
As a new mother of a four-month-old baby girl she believed a car would be more convenient for her family.
Wu, an accountant at a state-owned company, mentioned the idea to her husband, who did not oppose the purchase, so she went ahead and paid for it, largely with the earnings from her 3,500-yuan-a-month salary, as her husband’s finances were tied up in the stock market.
Wu’s is not an exceptional case in China, where women are playing a far bigger role in purchases for the family instead of being subservient to their husbands.
According to a report by Economist Intelligence Unit, which surveyed 5,500 women across major cities in Greater China, India, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, 62 per cent of mainland women described themselves as joint breadwinners, compared with the average rate of 41 per cent.
When it comes to e-commerce, women’s roles appear to be bigger on the mainland, with nearly 70 per cent of mainland interviewees saying they preferred the experience of shopping online to doing so in stores and are much more active than peers in South Korea (50 per cent), Hong Kong (30 per cent) and Japan (18 per cent).
It is estimated that China has 480 million female consumers, and among them, 290 million are aged between 25 and 45.
Women, who are making nearly 75 per cent of household buying decisions, are likely to be an important driver of domestic consumption in a market valued at more than 4.5 trillion yuan by 2019, especially in industries related to beauty, garment and leisure tourism, according to a memo by Guotai Junan Securities.
The growing number of well-educated and financially independent women, especially those living in the cities, has also prompted traditional manufacturers and service providers in China to engage more in marketing to attract female clients, a trend that research firm Mintel named as one of the most influential in the retail market this year.
China’s recent move to allow all families to have a second child, meant women would take on more financial responsibilities in the household, said Philix Liu, a trend analyst at Mintel.
But women’s role in the economy remained weak compared with their male counterparts, said women’s rights activist Feng Yuan.
Feng referred to a widening income gap between men and women in China. urban women in China earned only 65 per cent of what their male counterparts did in 2009, putting them five percentage points behind where they were in 1999.