Women Who Have Gone Forth

Women’s status and full participation in the religious life have been contested issues in the Theravada Buddhist country of Thailand. Historically, the category of “female monk” (bhikkhuni) has been denied to women. Nonetheless, there have long been female ascetics in Thailand. Known as mae chis, these white-robed Buddhist nuns have carved out a unique space in the Thai religious landscape. Women Who Have Gone Forth examines the experiences, attitudes, and practices of mae chis at a particularly germane time in Buddhist women’s history. Today, there is a global movement to secure women’s full participation in Buddhist monastic institutions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this study elucidates mae chis’ viewpoints on the Buddhist women’s ordination movement and the varying ways in which mae chis negotiate the demands of traditional and modern modes of authority. Women Who Have Gone Forth comprises a critical-empathic consideration of mae chis’ subjectivities that has implications for the global women’s ordination movement and cross-cultural feminist scholarship on women and religion, more broadly.