Thailand’s rebel female Buddhist monk on fighting sexism and her religion’s male monopoly

Bhikkhuni Dhammananda, 75, helped ordain eight women monks in 2014, only for Thailand’s ruling Buddhist body to prohibit all future female ordinations

She continues to ordain female Buddhist novices – about 800 now – and her own ordination in Sri Lanka has inspired almost 300 other female monks to do the same

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Venerable Dhammananda Bhikkhuni is Thailand’s first fully ordained female, Theravada Buddhist monk. Photo: Tibor Krausz

Published: 8:15am, 21 Nov 2019Updated: 12:29pm, 27 Nov 2019

Saffron-robed monks are a common sight across Thailand, collecting alms from the Buddhist faithful every morning, sitting cross-legged in temples, kneeling in prayer.

More than 99.9 per cent of them are men, and the nation’s Buddhist authorities are firm in their resolve to keep it that way.

Soon after Bhikkhuni Dhammananda, who had been ordained as a female monk in 2003 in Sri Lanka, helped ordain eight women monks in Thailand in 2014, the Sangha Supreme Council, Buddhism’s ruling body in the country, issued an edict confirming the prohibition of female ordinations.

It was the latest attempt by the all-male sangha, or Buddhist clergy, to ensure the monkhood remained a male monopoly under Thailand’s school of Theravada Buddhism.

A woman kneels as she donates to a newly ordained female Buddhist monk at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand. Photo: AFP

In 1928, the council barred male monks from ordaining women after a Thai politician and Buddhist activist had his two daughters ordained, sparking a social uproar. For almost eight decades, that directive effectively blocked women from joining the monkhood. Then Dhammananda, who was born Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, came along and rocked the monastic boat.

Bhikkhuni is the word for female monks and they have been recognised in Sri Lanka since 1998. “I was the first female Theravada monk in Thailand,” Dhammananda, 75, says. “Now we have 285 female monks [mostly ordained in Sri Lanka]. They knew I was ordained in Sri Lanka, so they followed in my footsteps.”