A Report on the Fourth International Conference on Buddhist Women.
While the hill council elections in Ladakh made the headlines, the summer of 1995 also saw in Leh the Fourth International Conference on Buddhist Women, under the aegis of Sakyadhita, an international organisation of Buddhist women founded in 1986 by Ven. Karma Lekshe Tsomo. Opened with much pomp and ceremony, the conference soon got down to business, that of stimulating discussion among Buddhist women from many different traditions and nationalities.
The conference boasted a wide range of speakers from all over Buddhist Asia, as well as Europe and North America. The diverse topics addressed included establishing a lineage of female teachers; life among Burmese, Ladakhi, Zangskari and Nepali men; prostitution in Thailand; empowering strategies for women in the Netherlands; Tibetan women in exile; as well as the question of why there were no female geshes in traditional Tibet.
Although topics and paper styles ranged widely, three key themes kept cropping up in the discussions: education of Buddhist women, difficulties faced by Buddhist women today, and the appropriation of the Asian Buddhist experience by Western Buddhists.