This book surveys both the part women have played in Buddhism historically and what Buddhism might become in its post-patriarchal future. The author completes the Buddhist historical record by discussing women, usually absent from histories of Buddhism, and she provides the first feminist analysis of the major concepts found in Buddhist religion.

Gross demonstrates that the core teachings of Buddhism promote gender equity rather than male dominance, despite the often sexist practices found in Buddhist institutions throughout history.

Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism, Rita Gross, SUNY Press, Paperback, 360 pages, $35.95

Rita M. Gross is Professor of Comparative Studies in Religion at the University of Wisconsin -- Eau Claire. A former president of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, she is the editor of Beyond Androcentrism: New Essays on Women and Religion, and with Nancy Falk, of Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious Lives. She is also the author of numerous articles and essays on women and religion.

Acknowledgments

I. Orientations
1: Strategies for a Feminist Revalorization of Buddhism
2: Orientations to Buddhism: Approaches, Basics, and Contours

II. Toward an Accurate and Usable Past: A Feminist Sketch of Buddhist History
3: Why Bother? What Is an Accurate and Usable Past Good For?
4: Sakyadhita, Daughters of the Buddha: Roles and Images of Women in Early Indian Buddhism
5: Do Innate Female Traits and Characteristics Exist? Roles and Images of Women in Indian Mahayana Buddhism
6: The Feminine Principle: Roles and Images of Women in Indian and Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism
7: Conclusions: Heroines and Tokens

III. "The Dharma is Neither Male nor Female": A Feminist Analysis of Key Concepts in Buddhism
8: Resources for a Buddhist Feminism
9: Setting the Stage: Presuppositions of the Buddhist Worldview
10: Strategies for a Feminist Analysis of Key Buddhist Concepts
11. Gender and Egolessness: Feminist Comments on Basic Buddhist Teachings
12. Gender and Emptiness: Feminist Comments on Mahayana Teachings
13. Gender and Buddha-Nature: Feminist Comments on Third Turning Teachings and the Vajrayana

IV. The Dharma is Both Female and Male: Toward an Androgynous Reconstruction of Buddhism

14: Verdicts and Judgments: Looking Backward; Looking Forward
15. Androgynous Institutions: Issues for Lay, Monastic and Yogic Practitioners
16. Androgynous View: New Concerns in Verbalizing the Dharma

1: "I Go for Refuge to the Sangha": Relationship and Enlightenment"
2: Sacred Outlook and Everyday Life
3: Spiritual Discipline: Vision and Transcendence in Remaking the World

Methodological Appendices
A. Here I Stand: Feminism as Academic Method and as Social Vision
B. Religious Experience and the Study of Religion: The History of Religions

Notes

Bibliography