Women's social status in pastoral areas has significant impact on the health condition of the grassland ecosystem. In this paper, Zhuaxixiulong township of Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, located in the eastern part of the Qilian Mountain, was chosen as the study area. Interviewees were randomly sampled from 100 Tibetan households. Through a variety of integrated social survey methods, such as questionnaires, villagers group meetings and one-on-one interviews, a systematic analysis was undertaken of women's roles in social activities, in animal production in the pastoral area and in housework, and their educational backgrounds and cognition of grassland policies. The results show that at the current stage of development and reform in rural areas, women perform as the main labor force in both livestock production and daily chores, undertaking nearly 80% of the production work in the field and 74.3% of the family. It could also be seen that women's social status and their influence in family economic decision-making has been gradually improving; the proportion of women participating in the family economic decision-making is 36.5% and the proportion with the final say is 14.5%. However, women's educational level was generally lower in pastoral areas with a female's lliteracy rate of 14.4%, which has resulted in lower adoption of grassland production and management technology by women, and less awareness of the efforts of national grassland policies, laws and regulations and weaker understanding of their impacts. This research implies that in pastoral areas women's literacy, decision-making influence and social roles may be factors in the sustainable development of the grassland-based animal husbandry industry.