Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

In China, unmarried men at 30 may be depicted as "eligible bachelors," but their female counterparts are usually tagged as "leftover women." Young educated women in their late twenties are seen as "picky" due to being over-educated and told it is unacceptable not to settle for any man they can get.

This pressure to get married, plus rising gender discrimination among employers, were found to be two powerful motivations for women to study abroad, research done by Professor Fran Martin at the University of Melbourne shows.

According to Martin's research, greater educational opportunities and transnational cultural and media influences mean the current generation of educated, urban young women tend to see their own gender identity in a more individualized way compared to the standard, family-centered feminine identity. Therefore, studying abroad represents an "escape route" from such gender contradictions.

As one such woman, studying abroad, I could easily feel how this kind of strong social pressure unconsciously shapes our basic values. Chatting with my female Chinese classmates in the UK, I heard repeatedly visions for life, love and marriage as well as worries of being unmarried at 30.

But studying abroad opened a window on a different set of values. People I met in the UK hardly ever experienced pressures from their family or society.

As Kate, a 25-year-old American doing a postgraduate program at my university, said, "I agree that there is also a trend of marrying up for women in the US but marriage is more about yourself and that right person. There is no 'right age for marriage.'"

More generally, when I googled "unmarried young women in the UK," I found only a few articles compared to the flood of such pieces about stories in China.

Does studying abroad mean just an "escape route" for Chinese young women? Maybe for some, but for most of us, it offers an opportunity to experience the coexistence and integration of multicultural values. Time will tell how our time away from China will ultimately affect our own visions of love, marriage, and gender identity.

A recent burst of discussion in China triggered by an advertisement for SKII cosmetics showed both the real pressure on young, educated women and how people are challenging it.

This high-end cosmetics brand chose a documentary style to tell the stories of young Chinese women tagged as "leftover" and their staging of a symbolic takeover of a Shanghai marriage market to protest the pressure to pair up.

The core value this ad portrayed is that women's identity is not merely defined by marriage. Women could and should have the freedom to choose either being unmarried or married and when to get married with whom. This freedom should be respected by both parents and society.

Instead of using words like "escape route," I prefer describing the choice and influence of studying abroad more positively. It shows us various possibilities of living a life that can encourage us to live in our own way rather than blindly following the social mainstream. We are armed with more courage and confidence to pursue not "timely marriage" but "true love" and "soul mates."

When we were in high school, we were told by parents and our schools that the failure to pass the college entrance examinations would be like the end of the world. Then we gradually found this was not true because mere exam grades could never define the whole value of adolescents, let alone adults.

Similarly, when young women are in their late twenties, we are told by our parents and society at large that the failure to get married in a "timely" way means being "leftover." But this is just as false as the earlier claims were.

If studying abroad gives us a chance to break out of objectifying ourselves, it's not just an escape route, but a passage to a better future.

The author is a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics and Political Science. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn. Follow us on Twitter @GTopinion