Before the democratic reform started in the late 1950s, Tibet experienced hundreds of years of feudal serfdom in which politics and religion went hand in hand and the clergy and aristocracy dictated, very much like Europe in the Middle Ages in many respects. The serf owners (officials, aristocrats and high-ranking clergy), who accounted for about five percent of the Tibetan population, possessed all the farmland, pastures, forests, mountains, rivers and mineral deposits, the majority of the herds and between 50 to 70 percent of the products put out by the labor of serfs and slaves. The serfs, more than 90 percent of the population, had no land, no housing and no personal freedom. Their lives belonged to the plantations of their lords. Domestic slaves,
accounting for five percent, had nothing. Their masters owned them both body and soul.
　　Serf owners handled serfs as property, buying and selling them, presenting them as gifts, mortgaging them, or using them in barter trade. They had final say on the serfs' births, deaths and marriages.
　　The Thirteen Codes and The Sixteen Codes, which functioned in old Tibet for hundreds of years, divided people into nine classes on three levels and made it clear that they enjoyed no equal legal status.
　　Women were listed as the lowest, particularly poor women. It was stipulated, for instance, that people differed in terms of classes and therefore their life prices also differed. The value of upper-class people on the top level, such as princes and living Buddhas , was equivalent to the amount of gold needed equal to weigh the corpse, while the lives of the lower-class people in the third level, such as women, butchers, hunters and artisans, were worth only a piece of straw rope. According to a study of Tibetans living on the pastures, the life-price of men was twice that of women.
　　The traditional teaching and disciplines of Tibetan Buddhism discriminated against women. This discrimination was also reflected in local laws, which were influenced by religion. Women were seen as unclean and men were warned to keep their distance from them. Malignancy and other evils were described as properties of women. Women images were often objects for conquest at Buddhist rituals. According to Tibetan history, all of Tibet was "a woman demon lying on her back." Lhasa was the heart of the demon. In order to conquer the demon, monasteries had to be built all over this body. In other words, the monasteries in present-day Tibet are also signs of discrimination against women.
　　The laws of old Tibet made it clear that women could not participate in politics. Some regulations insisted that men "should not discuss business with women," "should not listen to women" and "must not give women the right to discuss state affairs." Monasteries even used body parts of unmarried women for Buddhist ceremonies. This practice existed until the early 1950s. Many monasteries forbade women to enter certain halls lest they bring bad luck
with them.
　　The law of old Tibet also assigned a low status for women in marriages and families: they were grouped on the same level as domestic animals and classified as part of the family property. They could be presented as gifts. The law that stipulated the handling of the relatives of criminals said that for a criminal who had no children, "his wife shall be given to his father, or to his brother or other close male relatives if he had no father," or "be given, together with half of his domestic animals and other family property, to one of his close male relatives." If a man was saved by someone from under a yak, he should give his daughter to the savior, or his sister if he had no daughter, or 200 taels of silver if he had neither daughter nor sister. According to the law, noble women could also be given as gifts, only at a higher value.
　　In old Tibet, women suffered both in body and soul. They had to give birth in sheep pens. The infant mortality rate was 430 per thousand. The Gelukpa Sect forbade marriage for its monks. Since a large number of men entered monasteries as monks and did not participate in material and population production, women shouldered a large part of social responsibilities. They were the main source of taxes and corvee and did most of the work in and out of the house. Because many men became monks women had few men to marry. Even when they were married, many women were influenced by the teaching that human life was a sea of bitterness, and saw giving birth as one of the great ordeals of life. As a result, they were reluctant to have babies. Some girls pre-ferred to become nuns. Under the circumstances, the Tibetan population decreased by about a million inthe 200 years before the 1950s.
　　In old Tibet women shouldered most of the social production and housework and all the burdens of bearing and rearing children without the social re-cognition or status due to them. However, because of their irreplaceable role in the economic activities of the family and society, they were not totally subjected to the authority of their husbands. To a certain degree, they even had the right to possess and inherit family property. Traditionally, a Tibetan couple could either live with the man's family, or the woman's family. But these features could not change women's low general status in Tibetan society of old.