ABSTRACT
Phuntsog Drolma was another Tibetan woman whose year of birth was uncertain, but she would have been born shortly before 1930. The story of her life, told here by her eldest daughter, is one of early hardship relieved somewhat after the ‘democratic reforms’ of the late 1950s when Phuntsog Drolma was classified as ‘urban poor’ and became eligible for government support. Before that, widowed in her late 20s she worked tirelessly to support her five young children by spinning wool, sewing and knitting yet accumulating debt from taxes and rent that she was unable to repay. She was illiterate, and because of their poverty and low social status, her children could not go to school, but once universal education was offered in the 1960s she encouraged her children to pursue education.
