Lian Benz

  

Volume 9 | Issue III | September 2025

Avenues The World School ’26

New York, United States

  

While spending 10th grade abroad in Taiwan, I increasingly realized that the nature of womanhood and how feminism was perceived there varied dramatically from what I had gotten accustomed to as someone born and raised in New York City. This sparked an interest in gender studies and activism, as well as more broadly in why societies are the way that they are and how they differ from one another. When I moved back to NYC for 11th grade, I knew I wanted to conduct research on women in Taiwan, but I still had to hone in on a more specific topic. Through reading many scholarly papers, I came across Buddhist nuns and sex workers as two marginalized groups, both redefining traditional womanhood while existing outside of what was deemed socially acceptable. Despite the many similarities between how the two groups interacted with the nation and familial norms, I was unable to find any existing research deliberately comparing the two side by side. And there it was: the gap my research would attempt to fill. Being my first major academic research endeavor and the longest piece of writing I’d ever attempted, my paper also served as a means for me to learn about the many complexities of scholarly research—from tracking down sources to forming coherent and nuanced theories.