Miss Beautiful C.E.O and her system

Ling Qingyu understood what Xiao Yue had been trying to explain, though neither elaborated in front of the Spirit Fox operatives.

After all, their conversation involved details tied to their past lives—secrets that couldn't be spoken aloud, no matter the trust or loyalty of those around them.

Ling Qingyu suspected most of Xiao Yue's knowledge came from Tang Ziyi. If memory served her right, Xiao Yue's original timeline belonged to the chaotic warlord era.

Assuming the parallel worlds weren't drastically different, her time likely preceded the Second World War.

Ling Qingyu could imagine the conclusions Xiao Yue had drawn to support her point: that women had suffered no less than men or maybe more.

Perhaps Europe didn't leave behind as many graphic records, especially during the Great War, but the trauma endured by women in both world wars should never be underestimated.

In occupied territories, women were raped, displaced, or forced into labor. Sexual violence—especially against women of color in colonized regions—was rarely recorded.

The emotional toll was profound: waiting in fear, burying sons and husbands, starving, losing livelihoods, becoming widows or social outcasts.

Men and women across Africa and Asia were treated as tools—men conscripted, women violated—and their stories were systematically erased.

Yes, more men died in battle—but that didn't mean women suffered less.

They simply suffered differently, and their pain was under-recorded, dismissed, or ignored.

The so-called "Myth of European Mercy" painted World War I as a more restrained conflict, supposedly sparing civilian populations.

Indeed, WWI was brutal, but it operated under emerging international conventions like Geneva and The Hague, offering moments of relative mercy—at least in Europe.

But in non-white colonies during both world wars, such restraint vanished entirely.

Genocide, forced labor, scorched-earth tactics—colonial troops were used as cannon fodder.

"White mercy" applied only to fellow whites. Against other races, it was sheer barbarity.

From Xiao Yue's perspective, debates over whether men or women suffered more in modern timelines were missing the point—distractions that allowed the true culprits to evade accountability.

People often claimed that women were spared during the world wars. But were they?

Maybe in the trenches, yes. But in occupied villages? In brothels behind enemy lines? In the ruined remains of homes where mercy wore no uniform?

They said World War I was more civil. Maybe in Europe.

But in Asia or Africa? There was no Geneva in the jungle. No chivalry in the colonies.

Only bullets. Only orders.

The speculations of men were more victims were utterly nonsense. Funny enough, if war was born from man's greed and command since authoritative figures were males during the time, ignoring a handful of female supremes as other ministers were still men.

Such, perhaps, would have been Xiao Yue's exact words if their conversation had continued.

While silence filled the convoy, Athena remained active behind the scenes. Her daughter was diligently analyzing data, reading reports, and compiling conclusions for Ling Qingyu to review.

The findings were both intriguing and unsettling—challenging the popular narratives often pushed by influencers locked in battles over gender discourse.

Like Ling Qingyu and Xiao Yue had suspected, much of the public attention was misdirected—fighting the wrong enemies and fostering a kind of internal "civil war."

Take the claim: "Men suffer more because they die more in battle."

It was an oversimplification—one that ignored both context and long-term consequences.

Yes, during wartime, men typically died in greater numbers on the battlefield.

They were conscripted en masse, subjected to extreme physical and psychological trauma.

This was a devastating burden—but one rooted in patriarchal systems that treated men as disposable instruments of war and women as property to be protected or plundered.

But the post-war data told another side of the story:

— Higher female mortality after war.

Due to disease, poverty, starvation, and lack of medical care.

When infrastructure collapsed, services like maternity care, clean water, and food distribution often deprioritized women.

— Increased sexual violence.

Mass rapes, forced marriages, and human trafficking surged during and after conflicts.

These traumas inflicted long-term physical and psychological scars, often accompanied by social ostracization.

— Widowhood and poverty.

Women left behind were frequently barred from inheriting property, remarrying, or working.

In many societies, widowhood became a life sentence of poverty and isolation.

War was hell for everyone—but while men often died more visibly and quickly on the battlefield, women tended to suffer longer, more silently, and in ways less recorded once the dust had settled.

It was even worse for women in countries with deeply rooted chastity cultures and agonizing stigmas—circumstances that ultimately led Xiao Yue to believe women suffered more.

Their deaths, however, were often overlooked, brushed aside by the short-lived attention span of the public.

In societies where men were overwhelmingly preferred, the horror extended even to the killing of female infants—a grotesque reflection of extreme patriarchy.

Athena's historical records further informed Ling Qingyu that, contrary to popular belief, the gender ratio of wartime casualties hadn't drastically skewed toward men when considering the full picture.

According to available statistics from the First World War in this world, one woman died for every five to six men directly due to the conflict.

Extrapolating to her own past life's World War II, Ling Qingyu estimated the ratio narrowed to one woman for every four men.

However, when post-war deaths were factored in—those from famine, disease, systemic neglect, and gender-based violence—the ratio began to equalize.

This excluded cases in nations that heavily relied on cannon fodder strategies or were governed by regimes so oppressive that any meaningful data was distorted or silenced.

So much so, in fact, that even today, the lingering aftershocks of those wars could be seen in demographics: many societies now had more women than men—not because women were spared, but because they had survived different kinds of hell.

Ling Qingyu had to admit—arguing over who suffered more was ultimately irrelevant. There was no clear answer.

Those who "won" online debates were often just the ones who cited more data, read more reports, or knew how to manipulate statistics to fit their narrative.

In the end, the art of persuasion wasn't about lying. It was about telling the truth—but never the whole of it.

A/N: Please support me on Webnovel. I appreciate your support. Forgive the author for writing this down because Author's thought wouldn't appear in other sites.

"Not every soldier looted, not every officer abused. But when impunity outnumbers accountability, war crimes become norms, not exceptions."