Portrait of Tibetan poet Tsering Wangmo Dhompa by Natalie Foss
Women’s History Month is the perfect time to highlight BDRC’s Database of Contemporary Tibetan Women, which has recently been significantly expanded and enhanced.
At BDRC we have always valued and sought out writings by Buddhist women, but women have been comparatively invisible throughout Tibetan history. Buddhist writings that women authors composed were not always preserved in pre-modern times, and as a result only about 3-4% of BDRC’s person records of authors were women. This is a reflection of the patriarchal nature of human history in general, and Tibetan history in particular. Tibetan textual history has mostly been men writing texts about other men; where women are mentioned, it’s often because of their relationships—because they are adjacent to an important man, as mother, daughter, wife, consort or student—and not because of their achievements.
In the contemporary period, however, due to expanded educational opportunities and concerted efforts by Tibetan women, there are hundreds of Tibetan women authors who are highly productive and influential. BDRC wanted to recognize and document their important writings by creating or enhancing person records for as many Tibetan women writers as we are aware of. A project funded by the US Agency for International Development has enabled us to double the number of contemporary women on the archive. Thanks to recent work by BDRC staff, the BUDA archive is now likely the most extensive database of modern Tibetan women available.
BDRC’s extensive knowledge map of modern and contemporary Tibetan women authors and female figures (20th and 21st century Tibetan women) now contains a total of 376 records. They include enhanced BDRC Person metadata for 60% of all women authors and figures already existing in the database (194 Person Records), and 170 newly created person records for 165 new women authors and significant figures. This is an important addition to the public knowledge commons exemplified by the open-access BDRC archive.
