A recommended book review by Colin Goldner: Dalai Lama - Fall eines Gottkönigs, Alibri Verlag Aschaffenburg, 1999, written by Marcus Hammerschmitt. Worth reading (yes, it's not brand new, but I stumbled upon it for the first time - thanks go to Instant Nirvana). What we in the West like to forget again and again: these friendly smiling old men (whether they are Orthodox bishops, Catholic popes, Muslim ayatollahs or Tibetan lamas) represent very old ecclesiastical structures. With very old ideas. Old is not necessarily good.
Let's remind ourselves what church means: power. Great power. In all major churches (certainly in smaller ones too, just on a smaller scale) the primary goal at the highest level is the preservation of their own power against worldly influences. States can be democratically structured, churches are not. At best, you find pseudo-democracies.
The fact that women are massively oppressed in churches and are often without rights or merely tolerated for reproduction of the faithful is nothing new. In many major churches, women are missing something essential: the possibility of reaching the top, occupying central leadership positions, having any say in matters. Instead, they can merely serve as bearers of original sin. Or perform work - gladly including sexual services. Churches are purely a male affair. Descriptions of paradise often sound more like the last trip to a brothel than like a desirable state.
So it's no wonder that Tibetan Buddhism also has plenty of skeletons in the closet and the friendly smiling gentleman from Tibet should be regarded much like the friendly smiling gentleman from Rome: with great caution and utmost skepticism. Because the goal of friendly smiling old men is not the well-being of people, but the well-being (and power) of their churches.
The goals of churches and the goals of freely thinking people contradict each other very often, indeed almost inevitably, because power structures the size of, for example, the Catholic Church simply wouldn't be possible if everyone could think what they wanted. Unless you happen to be the pope or the Dalai Lama. But even he cannot do as he wishes. But perhaps he doesn't want to do otherwise anyway.
The Tibet of the Dalai Lama is merely a religiously founded state entity. And one should be afraid of such things. Regardless of which religion. Regardless of which church.