Should women be allowed into Buddhist temples or even ordained? They aren't (normally) in Thailand, but there are efforts to change things and the "old guard" of Buddhist monks aren't at all happy about it. Buddhism, like many other religions, has a long history of treating women like second class citizens and some women are trying to change things.

  The Taipei Times explains:

"When I was first ordained there were people that wanted to be ordained also but they didn't dare, so they waited to see if I got clobbered first," says Dhammananda Bhikkuni, Thailand's only Therevada Buddhist female monk. ... "Where did we derail? We have to go back to the Buddha, to Jesus, they were very open to women," says Dhammananda, who was ordained in Sri Lanka almost two years ago and has since been battling to build an official female monastic order known as a Sangha. "We're not asking for status, wealth or equality just our share of responsibility which was given to us by the Buddha to serve the community," she says.

Thailand's Buddhist patriarchs concede that the Buddha himself ordained women, including his wife, but point to teaching which says that at least five women monks directly descended from the first lineage of bhikkuni (female monks) are needed to ordain another. That lineage has never arrived in sufficient numbers in Thailand. The roughly 30,000 Thai Buddhist nuns wind up spending more time doing menial chores than meditating, says social worker Ouyporn Khuankaewm, who works with monks and nuns.

"So many are controlled and oppressed by the monks, the monks say your job is to clean and cook and if you don't do that you don't get to eat or stay at the temple," she says. "But they can help women who come to the temples and tell them something better than 'your husband beat you because you have bad Karma from a last life.'"

To a certain extent, these changes may be due to influence from the West — when Buddhist was taken to Europe and America, women weren’t as content to take a secondary role and this bothered a lot of Buddhist leaders. The more things can change, the better off women will be — not just those ordained, but the rest of women in society.

Read More:

• Religion 101
• Theism 101