Scaling the 8,849m-high peak has mainly been a male achievement. As of this month, women had reached the top 962 times, while men had done it 11,955 times, according to an AFP analysis of the Himalayan Database, which tracks expeditions to the top of Everest.
When Tabei reached the peak of Everest in 1975, 38 men had preceded her. With her all-woman team, she had struggled to find sponsors for her expedition, often being told they would be better off looking after their children.
“All men limit our likes and I do not want to be limited,” Tabei wrote in her notebook upon her return.
Eleven days later, a Tibetan woman, Phantog, reached the peak from the opposite side. She believed she had got there first, only learning she had been beaten by Tabei after she completed her descent.
In her notebook, Tabei laid out her next objectives: climb K2 – the world’s second-highest peak, the highest point of the Karakoram Range and the highest point in Pakistan – before returning to work for a scientific journal.
Since then, Everest has been climbed by 870 different women of 85 different nationalities, some having succeeded several times.
After Nepali climbers, the United States, India and China have sent the most men to the summit, and 39% of the women. Sherpas – Nepali guides who accompany their clients up Everest – are almost all men.
Everest’s home of Nepal accounts for half of the ascents by men but only 9% of those by women: 90 ascents by 66 different women.
Dawa Yangzum Sherpa, who climbed in 2012, is currently the only woman to be a certified Nepali guide. She received certification from the International Federation of Mountain Guides Association in 2017.
“This is a challenging field, even more so if you are a girl. There were people who said this is not a girl’s job, that I wouldn’t get work,” she told AFP.
Before her, Pasang Lhamu in 1993 became the first Nepali woman to reach the top of Everest. During her descent, she remained with a colleague who was suffering from altitude sickness, and both died of exhaustion.
Pasang became a national heroine, and the trek from base camp at Everest today starts with an arch paying tribute to her.
Her successor, Lhakpa Sherpa, was the second Nepali woman to reach the summit in 2000. She has since claimed the female record for the number of ascents: by this month, she has done 10.
Thirteen years after Tabei, in 1988, New Zealand’s Lydia Bradey became the first woman to reach the summit without an oxygen bottle, a respiratory aid that compensates for the effects of altitude.
As she made the ascent on her own, the other members of her expedition returned to the Nepal capital Kathmandu, where they publicly cast doubt on her success.
Facing being thrown out for having taken another route than that allowed by her permit, Bradey decided not to claim her achievement by the Nepali tourism ministry, even though it was recognised years later.
When women and men are put together, only 229 ascents – or less than 1% – succeeded without oxygen. Bradey and only nine other female climbers are on the list.
Women ‘better prepared’
“This is a different ball game from climbing with supplemental oxygen. Maybe women are a little bit more aware of that,” Germany’s Billi Bierling, the director of the Himalayan Database, told AFP.
“Women are often better prepared; when it comes to taking risks on the mountain, they’re probably a little bit more conservative.
“Maybe a woman by herself says, ‘You know what? This is too dangerous’ – whereas a male climber would still go,” Bierling, who climbed Everest in 2009, said.
So, while only 66% of the hundred-odd women who make the attempt every year succeed – versus 75% for men – their fatality rate is lower: a woman dies on the slopes of Everest every 153 tries; a man every 70 attempts.
And while women are still in a minority at the top of Everest, the ratio of them getting there is increasing: women were one to 16 men in the 2000s, and one to 10 two decades later.