In the past two decades, English-language scholarship has challenged the gendered dimension of the Buddhist tradition. Spearheaded by Rita M. Gross (Buddhism after Patriarchy: a Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993]), Karma Lekshe Tsomo (Buddhist Women Across Cultures: Realizations [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999]), and Bernard Faure (The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity, and Gender [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2003]), to name a few, the new scholarship exposes the ways in which androcentric and often misogynistic Buddhist history has left half the story untold—namely, the story of Buddhist women. Several dozen monographs and edited volumes now examine the lives and practices of female Buddhists in the East and the West and analyze implications of these recovered stories for understanding Buddhism as a whole. However, aside from two books, by Martine Bachelor (Women in...
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