G.T. is a Chicago-based freelance writer and editor and a contributor to the Feminist Review blog. Her writing has appeared in Travelmag and Long Story Short, and her poetry has been featured in Sol Magazine.
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MagazineThe gender of enlightenment
There is a glass ceiling for women seeking spiritual advancement in the Buddhist temples, or “wats” that dot the Thai landscape. Women who seek to be ordained as Bhikkhunis, the highest order of Buddhist nuns, possessing equal status to monks, continue to experience significant resistance from the religious clergy and more conservative elements of Thai society. In this country of over 300,000 monastics, Dr. Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, whose ordained name is Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, is a trailblazer in the movement to create a Bhikkhuni order in Thailand.
