When three female students graduated from the Tibetan Medicine Institute this month, they became the first batch of female Tibetan master degree holders. But they will not be alone among educated Tibetan women, as the region boasts numerous female university professors, police officers, scientists, lawyers and others serving in various social sectors.

"Tibetan women enjoy the same right to education as their male peers," said Wangdu, deputy head of the Tibet Regional Educational Department, at an ongoing symposium on education at the poor and border regions in Tibet held in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Official statistics from 2003 show the ratio between male illiterates and female illiterates in Tibet was 39.3 to 60.7, the narrowest in the country.

Due to the government's particular stress on girls' education, 150,000 girls are in school, 46.6 percent of the total pupils in Tibet. The attendance rate of girl pupils in Tibet is more than 91 percent.

To get some 2,000 female dropouts from poor areas back into school, the regional government has allocated 2.58 million yuan (US$310,843) to build six Spring Bud schools and 23 Spring Bud classes, designed for female dropouts, in the past five years.

Meanwhile, the region has opened 5,500 anti-illiteracy classes since 1999, to help 220,000 Tibetan women living in remote and poor agricultural and pastoral areas learn to read and write.

(Xinhua News Agency July 26, 2004)