Trigger Warning: The following article contains descriptions and statistics related to child marriage, kidnapping and sucicide, including sexual exploitation, forced labor, and abuse. Some content may be distressing to readers. Please proceed with caution.
This is the second blog in the 3-part series of Supernova: She Speaks' collaboration with YouthxYouth. This blog series uses the YouthxYouth pedagogy of What Is, What If, and What Now, combined with Supernova: She Speaks’ mission of raising awareness and achieving gender equality. In this third blog, Supernova: She Speaks goes into the What If of gender equality in East Asia, specifically looking at how women are rewriting their futures.
Can you imagine being born without the right to receive education, being raised so you can solely serve your brothers?
That’s what's happening to young girls in rural areas of China right now. According to UN Women 122 million girls are out of school, around the world, and nearly 4 in 10 adolescent girls and young women globally do not complete upper secondary school.
Please try to put yourself in these girls’ shoes (if they even have decent, intact shoes). How could you overcome the obstacle of having lost school, and even worse, the right to live decently?
When Hope Lives in a Single School
Here is one real example that happened in Yunnan, a southwestern province in China, which is considered one of the poorest provinces in the Country. In this underdeveloped area, Huaping Senior High School for Girls has saved over 2,000 girls from unequal practices that are present within the mountainous areas. (People's Daily Online)
In the video below, you can learn about what the legendary female principal has done for girls in Huaping County and how she became a pioneer in China.
Teacher devotes life to girls' education
Huaping Senior High School for Girls is China’s first public high school that provides free education for female students. The school’s principal, Guimei Zhang, recognized that when a girl is about to be forced to be a bride, even an imperfect education system could save her from the upcoming tragedy.
We have to admit that Huaping Senior High School for Girls still operates within China's examination-oriented framework, and it exists within a political system that many question. But what matters most is that for rural girls trapped by families where their parents would be happy to exploit them until they married. Learning, even within an overly demanding testing system, is the only way to regain autonomy.
She didn't have the luxury of demanding a higher standard of education.
Joining Huaping Senior High School for Girls means discipline, high academic standards, and relentless focus on test scores. Though exhausting, this is likely the only way girls can equip themselves against the patriarchy.
For Huaping girls, Gaokao (China's college entrance exam) is their best chance to escape predetermined fate.
The impact becomes crystal clear in the words of one graduate: "Without Principal Zhang, a girl of my age should've been a 3-year-old child's mom by now."
Zhang didn't just save an individual girl. She broke a time loop that had bound girls for centuries.
Today, most of Zhang's students have become civil servants in larger cities, with salaries sufficient enough to support them. Some also choose to donate to their mother school to make the study environment better for girls. Others have chosen to remain in Yunnan, following Zhang's footsteps.
But behind this moving scene lies a deeper, more systemic problem.
The Roots Run Deep: How Confucian-based Patriarchy Built the Cage
To understand why millions of girls across East Asia are denied education, we must trace back to the philosophical foundations that have shaped these societies for thousands of years.
How Does Confucianism Relate To Gender Roles? - China Cultural Expedition
Confucianism established the fundamentals of social order.
At its core, Confucian ideology established rigid hierarchical relationships: ruler over subject, father over son, husband over wife, elder over younger, and crucially, male over female. This became the moral framework that governed every aspect of life.
The concept of filial piety placed family honor above individual desires, particularly for women. A daughter's worth was measured not by her intelligence, but by her ability to bring honor to her family through marriage and, most importantly, sons.
This created a devastating economic calculation.
For rural families struggling with poverty, educating a daughter becomes an “investment” that would ultimately benefit another family: her husband's. Meanwhile, educating sons means securing the family’s future lineage and financial support.
The math was cruel but clear: boys were assets, girls were expenses.
The Ripple Effect: From Philosophy to Daily Oppression
Confucian-based patriarchy has evolved and adapted, finding new ways to limit women in modern society.
Just as we mentioned before, many of Zhang’s students’ families are in severe, financially-challenged situations. In their families, these girls’ parents tend to let their daughters marry young, so that in traditional culture, the family of the groom can offer some property to the family of the bride, which means the latter would have more money to cultivate the boys in the family.
The numbers are staggering.
Though the Chinese government didn’t provide specific data, according to data from UNICEF, the child marriage burden at 15 goes up to 1,000,000, while the child marriage burden at 18 goes up to 36,700,000, which ranks 3rd in the world.
While the Chinese government didn't release official figures, UNICEF data shows that 1 million Chinese girls are married before age 15, and 36.7 million are married before age 18. This makes China the third-highest country globally for child marriage numbers.
The Data Tells a Story of Slow Progress
Let’s take an inside look at girls’ education in East Asia with the help of some data.
As illustrated in Chart 1, the education ratio has risen for both females and males. However, the educational attainment ratio for females stays lower than that for males for the period between 2010 and 2020.
We can see some positive signs, though. Let’s do some math to reveal the trend.
Using the difference between 2010 and 2020 educational attainment rates, divided by the 2010 baseline, we can calculate the growth rate for each gender.
The results show that the female educational attainment grew at a rate of 0.59, while the male educational attainment grew at 0.48, which means that the number of female students who get a bachelor’s degree is increasing faster than the number of males.
This progress represents millions of women who have gained access to higher education and professional opportunities that their mothers never had.
But behind these encouraging national averages lies a huge geographic divide.
While urban women increasingly enter universities and professional careers, rural girls like those in Huaping County face a wholly different world. Wherever Confucian-based patriarchy influences family values, resources will flow to sons who will “inherit” the family name.
For rural families, it’s a waste of money to educate a girl, while educating a son secures their own.
The girl who might have become a doctor or teacher instead becomes a teenage bride, her potential buried in mountain villages where patriarchy weighs heavier than dreams. These are the girls who are absent from our statistics. Not because they lack ability, but because they were never given the chance to prove it.
National progress means little when entire populations are systematically excluded from participating.
This isn’t just happening in China alone. The whole East Asia area faces the same struggle.
The regional data reveals a disturbing pattern that transcends national boundaries.
In 2010, female bachelor's degree attainment rates stood at 3.00% in China, 11.56% in Japan, and 19.68% in South Korea. Male rates were 4.15%, 29.14%, and 29.32% respectively.
Notice the gaps: while the Chinese gender disparity was relatively small due to universally low education levels, Japan and South Korea showed massive chasms; men were 2.5 times more likely to have degrees in Japan, and 1.5 times more likely in South Korea.
By 2020, the numbers tell a story of progress and persistent inequality.
Female rates climbed to 7.40% in China, 16.97% in Japan, and 28.66% in South Korea. Male rates reached 7.95%, 35.00%, and 39.21%. Though it maintained a lower level of education, China achieved near-parity, but Japan and South Korea maintained their substantial gender gaps, with Japanese men still twice as likely to hold degrees.
Even more telling is the average across the region: East Asian women's educational attainment consistently lags behind men's, despite a decade of supposed progress.
It’s more than education alone, but a window into how deeply embedded gender hierarchies operate across different political systems, economic models, and stages of development. Whether in China, South Korea, or Japan, the same Confucian-based patriarchy enables the assumption that investing in women's education is inferior to investing in men's.
The numbers reveal that patriarchy adapts to different contexts while maintaining its core function: ensuring women remain one step behind, regardless of the society they live in.
Beyond Classroom: Where Confucianism-based Patriarchy Lives Today
How Did Confucianism Reinforce The Patriarchy In Chinese Society? - China Cultural Expedition
The oppression of Confucian-based patriarchy not only limits women in the education area, but also in all aspects of our daily life.
In the workplace, centuries-old expectations have transformed into new-patterned discrimination. Employers often assume women will “eventually leave” to raise children, leading to biased hiring practices. Employers create the low-paying “mommy track” jobs for mothers who come back from maternity to the office, offering them low pay and gradually forcing them to stay at home.
The message being spread is clear: your gender is your limitation.
In media representation, the Confucian-based Patriarchy ideal of the obedient woman led to the “pale, childlike, skinny” beauty standard. Women try every possible means, including starving themselves and harmful plastic surgery, to meet unrealistic expectations that prevent women from being strong and capable.
These ideals shape self-worth, job opportunities, and even social mobility.
In family dynamics, the ancient hierarchy persists. Daughters are still expected to always care for their parents. The pressure to produce male heirs continues to devalue women's contributions to family legacy.
Each of these modern manifestations traces back to the system that was designed to keep women quiet, obedient, and uncompetitive for men.
The Cost of Silence: What We’re All Losing
What if girls in rural China had equal access to education?
Would they break generational cycles of obedience and rewrite their futures through innovation and leadership? Would communities, and even the world, benefit from the value they’re finally allowed to create?
What if mothers weren’t punished for giving life, but empowered to return to work without sacrifice or discrimination?
Would more women feel proud to express themselves and be a leader, without apologizing for who they are? What untapped ideas, policies, and businesses might flourish if women weren’t pushed to the sidelines?
What if the “pale, childlike, skinny” beauty ideal becomes ridiculous in our mirrors and minds?
Would young women stop starving their bodies and chasing stronger bodies? Would we become stronger, physically, mentally, socially, capable of carrying our goals and building futures that reflect who we truly are?
These aren't just hypothetical questions. These are the worlds we could’ve achieved, but are fading, every day we persuade ourselves to accept the status quo.
Breaking Free: A Roadmap for Revolution
The time for polite requests is over.
Here I list some actions you can take, whether you’re in the circumstances of being oppressed by Confucianism-based patriarchy, your relatives or friends are in those circumstances, or you just want to back your female allies up.
Refuse to obey what was never right.
For East Asian women, the first step is to stop internalizing injustice as “just the way it is.” The world wants us quiet, pretty, and obedient.
But we must ask, why?
Break the information bubble. Seek alternative stories. Realize that your life can be more than surviving in a system that was never built for you.
Unlearn the habit of pleasing the male gaze.
For many women, especially in East Asian cultures, the urge to be “pleasing” runs deep. Pale skin, childlike features, a skinny body that takes up as little space as possible. But these are not beauty standards but control mechanisms.
Fight for real educational equity for rural girls.
Any donation for rural girls would be highly appreciated. However, as some scandals remind us, we must ask some practical questions.
Are these resources reaching the girls who need them most?
Every scholarship, every meal plan, every policy must be tracked.
Speak up for those with more to lose.
Women with power are sometimes silenced not because they’re weak, but because their voices threaten the system. And if the law won’t protect them, we must.
Support whoever is brave enough to stand out and reveal the truth, amplify the voices of survivors, and challenge the system that punishes them for speaking out.
If we want structural change, we need to stop asking for permission and start shifting the rules.
Conclusion: The Future We're Fighting For
The cage built by centuries of Confucianism-patriarchy is strong, but it's not unbreakable.
Every girl who walks through the doors of Huaping Senior High School for Girls is proof that change is possible. Every woman who speaks up in a boardroom, every mother who refuses to shrink herself, every daughter who chooses her own path… They're all part of the same revolution.
We're not just fighting for education or workplace equality or beauty standards.
We're fighting for the right to exist fully, to contribute completely, to lead unapologetically.
The silence is breaking. The future is calling.
And this time, we're answering back.
Works Cited
People's Daily Online. “‘Mom Principal’ Zhang Guimei: I Send Them out of the Mountains, and They Keep Me in the World - People’s Daily Online.” People.cn, 2024, en.people.cn/n3/2024/0912/c90000-20218367.html.
UNICEF. “Child Marriage.” UNICEF DATA, UNICEF, June 2023, data.unicef.org/topic/child-protection/child-marriage/.
---. “Girls’ Education.” UNICEF, 2023, www.unicef.org/education/girls-education.
Cecilia Wang
Cecilia Wang is a bilingual student leader, writer, and social entrepreneur from East Asia. Her research focuses on the economics of girls’ education in the region, exploring how structural inequalities impact opportunity. As President of the Broadcasting Club and Head of the Student Union’s Publicity Department, she combines communication skills with advocacy to raise awareness of women’s realities in East Asia. Co-founder of Supernova: She Speaks, an interactive storytelling app and non-profit organization, she seeks to drive progress and change from within the community. She is also passionate about creative writing, statistics, and the arts.
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Supernova: She Speaks
Supernova: She Speaks is a nonprofit dedicated to combating global gender inequality through education, storytelling, and advocacy. We believe in the power of narratives to bridge cultures, foster empathy, and inspire action. From addressing bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan to exposing education denial in China and systemic patriarchy worldwide, we shed light on overlooked injustices faced by women and girls. Through innovative tools like our gamified app and global partnerships with similar missions, we strive to create a world where gender equality is not an aspiration, but reality.
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