The Buddhist Nuns of Taiwan: Contextualizing and Complicating the Success Story

Taiwan is often touted as the success story in scholarship on gender equality in Buddhism. Nuns there not only significantly outnumber monks, they also play an active leadership role in education, social welfare, charity, pastoral care, and environmental initiatives. This talk will begin with the socio-political and economic contexts in the second half of the twentieth century, under which communities of Buddhist female practitioners thrived. It will then explore the various interpretations, expressions, and debates on gender in contemporary Buddhism in Taiwan.

We welcome Professor Rongdao Lai, assistant professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies from McGill University to share her knowledge with us. Her research focuses primarily on the changing landscape and identity production in modern Chinese Buddhism. In addition to the forthcoming monograph Citizen Bodhisattvas: Education, Student-Monks, and Citizenship in Modern Chinese Buddhism (Brill 2025), her on-going projects include historical production, lineage networks, transnational movements, and monastic economy in twentieth-century Chinese Buddhism.

— For women’s history month we wanted to introduce another perspective to the conversation surrounding women and religion. There is no one way for women to be in religious spaces and we hope that this talk will be able to inspire future conversations about making religious conversations a place where women feel like they belong.