materials
To understand how educational inequality for rural women is constructed in public discourse, I began gathering various materials: news reports, documentaries, vlogs on Bilibili and Xiaohongshu, and online comment threads. These sources reflect perspectives from media, content creators, and the general public. I pay close attention to recurring terms, value judgments, and implicit gender or urban–rural ideologies. Although the materials are diverse and sometimes messy, I realized this very complexity is what makes my research site meaningful and rich for discourse analysis.
While collecting materials, I came across some specific examples that deepened my thinking. In many comments on Zhang Guimei, there are still some voices of doubt, such as “the female high school occupy more male resources” or “If she really has great love, why only help girls?” These examples show how society and audiences often view women’s education through a lens of moral discipline and obligation.
