One of the things the mainland Chinese drama series (set 1979–92) that I've been watching focuses on is the education and career paths of the younger generation.
The girls are expected to just get into some kind of job, it doesn't matter what, because they'll be getting married anyway. It's more important for them to find someone with residency, which is what will set them on the right path in life, i.e., not have to live in some backwater place.
Gender roles are clearly set in the Chinese culture, though perhaps less rigidly now.
My brother was the only boy but also the least able scholastically. He kept failing a grade, having to redo it, then just about making it to the next grade up, before repeating the cycle until he became overaged. (The only other option in those days was to go to adult education classes, but I don't know what happens at the end of that route.)
We four girls said we'd give our inheritance money to him because, being women, we'd have our husbands to support us, whilst being a man, he'd be expected to support his family, scholastically able or not. This was said back in the 60s.
A woman's role was to bear children and pass on the (man's) family name. The sole blame for infertility was traditionally laid at the girl's door.
A girl was also expected to be able to cook, if not to sew as well. My mother made me learn how to sew and cook when she found that I was still not able to at age 16.
My sister-in-law said to me years later, "When I first met you and you said you couldn't cook, I thought, 'How can a girl not know how to cook!?' Then you cooked some clams for me: you boiled some water, added some salt, threw the clams in, then fished them out and presented them to me, and I thought, 'Yep, she's right. She can't cook.'" That was the cultural remit of being a girl/woman at the time.
In the mainland Chinese drama series, the studious girl and the boy next door decided to get married in spite of their young age (still at university -- young according to the official perspective), rather than risk being allocated jobs in different geographical places and end up splitting up.
Her family is up in arms about this, saying she is jeopardising her future [prospects romantically] if the relationship doesn't work out after all and she ends up with the stigma of being labelled "a divorced woman". No one issues the same warning to the boy.
(Singapore, 1960s; China, 1991)
For those of you who need "residency" explained (thanks to Valerio for drawing my attention to this):
(from googling)
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China's Hukou (户口) is a mandatory household registration system tying citizens to a specific location, determining access to crucial social benefits like education, healthcare, and welfare, effectively creating internal passports that historically controlled migration and still influence opportunities, especially between rural and urban areas, dictating entitlements even with recent reforms. It's a central document recording personal info and family ties, crucial for accessing local government services, education, and jobs.
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