How Taiwanese Buddhism Responds to the Feminist Movement in Modern Taiwan

Abstract

Gender is a very important issue in religious studies. Although the issue of female identity was always ignored in a Buddhist society, we can find Buddhist attitudes towards women according to historical Buddhist texts. We find that Buddhists have a very ambivalent attitude towards female identity, acknowledging the equal spiritual potential of women while emphasizing their bad characteristics because of bad karma in the past. Because of the spread of Buddhist texts, this contradictory concept of gender has been extended to modern Buddhist society, leading to the obstacles of modern Buddhists responding to the female movement. This paper tries to analyze how Taiwanese Buddhism responds to the feminist movement in modern Taiwan. Through observing the efforts of two powerful Taiwanese local Buddhist organizations, we can see the efforts of Buddhist society in Taiwan to raise the status and level of learning of nuns, although based on accepting some discriminatory concepts of traditional Buddhist texts. The women's movement raised the social status and influence of nuns, allowing them to challenge the patriarchal Buddhist narrative and the traditional monastic system, and in turn instilled gender equality in the Buddhist community that monks and nuns are equalized.