Buddhist nuns in Nepal and women's empowerment: A biographical approach

While biographies of monks have proliferated over the centuries, there has been precious little writing on the life stories of the female members of the monastic community. Addressing the need for biographies about contemporary Buddhist nuns, and on helping these women to find their voices, this biographical narrative study documents and explores the life stories of a group of Vajrayana nuns residing in a Buddhist abbey in Kathmandu, Nepal. This study centers on concepts of empowerment but aims to explore how a group of contemporary nuns are utilizing and redefining their situated empowerment within their religious community and beyond. Through in-depth interviews, this research examines ways in which these contemporary nuns exercise and contest power within a Buddhist institution, predicated on core religious teachings that profess egalitarianism yet situated within a larger sociocultural milieu that is notoriously oppressive to women and girls. It explores what empowerment opportunities and challenges they face as twenty-first century nuns, and how their roles and identities as Buddhist nuns are evolving in increasingly empowering ways.