Mulan is one of the few types of female characters Disney has created, a brave and knowledgeable savior. Mulan fights for her sick father and fulfills her duty to protect the family's honor by pretending a man and participating in military service. The entire story shows Mulan's bravery in preserving her family, even though military service was a man's duty in this ancient Chinese period.
As the lyrics of the following video show, she was initially educated to be the ideal woman in the Chinese culture and society.
However, the story focuses on Mulan's growth from a country girl to a loyal and brave warrior, characterizing Mulan as an independent woman. Additionally, the captain of her army Li Shang had worked with her and grew together. While early Disney films associated princesses like Princess Aurora and Snow White with passive, and subservient female roles, lately there began to be more brave female characters who have their own ambitions and dreams and independent thinking such as Ariel, Belle, and Jasmine.
Because films can implicitly spread and embed social and ideological norms, Disney's princess series has influenced women's gender perceptions of children(Qingli and Ying, 2020). Thus, the portrayal of Mulan as brave, saving her country, and being accepted by her peers can show women can play an active part as much as men, and which provides audiances with an inclusive value system for breaking submissive women's stereotypes.
You can learn more about how Mulan was portrayed and how she grew up in the video below.