While attending a Buddhist conference earlier this year, I saw a familiar scene. Most of the speakers on the podium were men while the audience was largely women—many in midlife or beyond—listening attentively. This gendered configuration was not unexpected given the persistent disparity between the number of women who participate in Buddhist communities and the proportion who occupy positions of formal authority and leadership. And although this picture is gradually changing, gains in women’s representation and recognition as leaders remain fragile and underdeveloped.  

For a moment, I imagined the arrangement reversed. What would it be like if the women listening, or indeed those who identify as trans or non-binary, occupied the stage while the male leaders sat amongst the audience?  What forms of Buddhist knowledge and experience might come to the fore? And how many would attend events where the non-male perspective was centred in this way rather than positioned in the margins?

Of course, there is one such treasured and notable gathering that offers such a space: Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women, whose yearly conferences draw huge crowds from around the world.

However, while many now endeavour to platform women speakers, many Buddhist gatherings struggle to move beyond tokenism. Even when numerical representation is achieved, we face another challenge: the elevating of non-androcentric forms of knowledge. That is, perspectives that do not assume male experiences as the default.

These imaginings brought into focus an enduring question at the intersection of feminism and Buddhism: whose voice is recognised, platformed, celebrated, and whose remains constrained, dismissed, or stifled?

This question warrants our attention if we are genuinely committed to a Buddhism no longer flattened or distorted by patriarchal and exclusionary assumptions. At the heart of the Buddha’s teachings is a radical and egalitarian vision of human potential, one that is not limited by social status, hierarchy or gender. The Buddha affirmed the social and soteriological capacities of women, challenging the patriarchal culture of his time and opening paths across genders to fully participate in spiritual life.

Yet when contemporary Buddhist communities continue to platform only certain perspectives, we risk losing touch with the beating heart of the tradition itself. We also lose an entire dimension of human life and its wisdom – including the insights of those who have enacted the brahmavihāras through the under-recognised demands of community life, care and relationships.

The lived wisdom that emerges from the embodied practices of care (sustaining family, supporting the sangha, and companioning people through illness, aging and death) is often overlooked when legitimacy is bound to traditional and institutional forms of expression.

If lovingkindness, appreciative joy, compassion and equanimity are central to the Buddhism we practice, then the “ordinary” or “mundane” spaces in which these qualities must be cultivated (relationships, caregiving, dependency, aging, sickness and family life) are not peripheral concerns. They are crucial sites of practice.

We often think of “voice” as something personal, as a capacity for unique expression or charisma. However, voice is never merely an individual quality. Every community decides, often unconsciously, whose speech is afforded weight and legitimacy. Dominant voices do not simply communicate the insights of a given tradition; they also limit the scope of the tradition itself. They dictate not only who speaks, but what can be spoken about and what we come to know about ourselves collectively.

In Gender, Media and Voice Communicative Injustice and Public Speech (2020), media studies scholar Jilly Boyce Kay argues that having a voice is not simply about being able to speak. Rather, it is about having the opportunity to equally participate in moulding the collective life of a community. Yet we often confuse visibility with genuine participation and influence. Simply being invited to speak does not mean you have the power to shape the parameters of the conversation.

This tension is pronounced in an age that continually encourages women and minorities to “find their voice”, while the platforms through which we communicate continue to reward only certain kinds of stories. The consequences may not be obvious at first but become clearer when we reflect on which kinds of speech are welcomed and which are discouraged.

Boyce Kay observes that women often become publicly audible only under particular conditions. They are often invited to speak when recounting trauma, abuse or personal suffering. Such stories are transformative, as evidenced by the global #Metoo movement, which has revolutionised public conversations and exposed systemic cruelty.

However, we must also reflect on some of the less obvious consequences at play. When women’s authority becomes tied to trauma disclosure or vulnerability, then recognition itself remains conditional. In other words, this may create a dynamic where women are listened to, but only after leading with the emotionally vulnerable dimensions of experience.

This invites a further question: what types of knowledge are we celebrating in our traditions? What topics are women encouraged to publicly discuss, and which narratives do we reward? I still hear echoes of the hero’s myth in many contemporary Dharma talks.

Are we only interested in polished, charismatic speakers (irrespective of gender) or can we make space for quieter, even silent, expressions? Can we value the more hesitant, and those whose wisdom is not immediately expressed through rhetoric?

There is deep Buddhist insight to be found in the experiences of those who are not accomplished orators but have spent decades living the Dharma, serving with humility and care, and enacting loving kindness in the embodied practice of care for say infants, the elderly, and those who are unwell.

Much of contemporary Buddhist discourse still revolves around familiar modernist themes: meditation, consciousness, philosophy, and the nature of mind. These are vital conversations, but they are not the only conversations worth having.

Many of the issues that have become central to my own thinking continue to sit at the edges of mainstream Buddhist discourse: caregiving, dependency, embodiment, sexuality, power, family violence, ecological collapse, and the invisible work of sustaining relationships with children and elders. These are not niche concerns. They are the fabric of many people’s lives.

Yet this is precisely where people struggle, love, and experience dependencies, and encounter direct interconnection.

Of course it is very welcome to have more women teaching, writing and speaking publicly. However, equality requires something more. It demands we reexamine what counts as wisdom in our given tradition. Do we value confidence over hesitation, certitude over complexity, mastery over the provisional, or individual heroism over relationality?

A Buddhist tradition that listens only to certain viewpoints and storylines risks being capable of navigating only certain forms of human experience. It may become highly sophisticated in discussing philosophy and meditative states, but ill-equipped to navigate complexity and ambiguity in the embodied and entangled world.

I personally want to hear more from practitioners and teachers with alternative forms of knowledge and expression; people who may not initially fit familiar moulds, but who invite us to move out of tired discourses and into unexpected terrain. Perhaps this is one of the great tasks facing contemporary Buddhism: what are we prepared to recognise as wisdom, even when it unsettles our preexisting presumptions?

Dr Nadine Levy (PhD, LLB (Hons), BA (Hons)) is the Head of Program in Health and Social Wellbeing, Applied Mindfulness and Mental health at Nan Tien Institute and the President of Sakyadhita Australia. She teaches and researches in mindfulness, compassion, and social emotions, with a focus on the therapeutic role of spiritual community and the intersection of Buddhist practice and psychotherapy. Nadine is an Insight Meditation teacher trained by James Baraz and the Insight Meditation Institute in Sydney. She leads retreats and workshops internationally and is a regular columnist for The Guardian on the topic of contemporary Buddhism and spirituality.

See more

In Buddhism, women blaze a path but strive for gender equity (AP News)
Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women
Gender, Media and Voice Communicative Injustice and Public Speech (Springer Nature)

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