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Tibetan women's status is high

In Tibet, since they don't mind if it is a girl or a boy, both are important.

The local women's federation leader told me that in Tibet man and woman are equal. In government, women also enjoy certain proportion of positions.

Women all enjoy education and work  rights.

There is no discrimination between boys and girls like in Han people.

They worship nature more. For example if it is a girl, they will call her moon or sun.

If it is a boy they will call him mountain.

    Tibetan family planning situation

In Dangxiong county, we met a couple whose family was blacksmith before liberation. The man was 49 and the woman was 47. They have 8 children.

Why do you have so many children? I asked.

I don't want to have so many, but I had not taken contraceptive method either.  Even if in the end I wanted to take measures, it was too late. I hope my daughter would take measures earlier.

They live on small business in the market to sell things. The man and his son in law and sons have a truck to transport things for others. That makes some money for them.

Their house is not very tall. They used to live nomadic life, but then settled down. The house was built by the local government. Inside the house, there are carpets and furnace.

It is not as good as the early settlers who have two story buildings, but it is better than living nomadic life, they said because it was too difficult especially when they have so many children.

I also talked with the Family Planning leader in Lhasa. She said the issue in Tibet is not that women don't want to take contraceptive measures, it is that the service is not sufficient.

She told me a story.

"A woman who lives in Xigaze area, but not in the town. She lived in rural area and she must ride a horse in order to go to the town clinic for contraception. So she went once. And unfortunately, the doctor was not there. Then she had another child. Next time she went to the clinic again, but still didn't meet the doctor who went to other place for work. So she had another child. In the end, in total she had five children."

She said in the grassland area, women have more children, but live a poor life because she never got married and man just came for one night and she had a baby, soon man would leave and next time may be another man.

So she said what Tibet needs is to provide sufficient service for women. More hospitals, doctors and clinics even in the rural area.

She said Tibetan's didn't mind whether they had a boy or a girl. So the local population in terms of gender is very balanced.