Gender is a complex topic within Buddhist societies and one that has long held the fascination of researchers studying Southeast Asia. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, scholars, not knowing how to categorize the status of women, portrayed them as doing better than their counterparts in China and India, with relative gender equality.Footnote ¹ Buddhism adds another layer to the gender question. Although Barbara Andaya argues that Theravada Buddhism attracted female support, propelling its spread in mainland Southeast Asia, there is much more to explore concerning the ways Theravada Buddhism affects gender relations in Southeast Asian societies. Can women reach the highest levels of the religion in similar ways to men? What advantages do men have within the conservative Theravada Buddhist hierarchy? How has this affected society's perceptions of each gender? These are some of the complex questions that two recent books deal with, both reaching a high level of nuance with creative arguments about the spaces available for women, men, and others within the Buddhist communities of Myanmar and Thailand.

In his monograph titled The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma, Ward Keeler, an anthropologist of Southeast Asia, focuses on the implications of hierarchy for women, men, and transgender people within Burmese Buddhism and, more broadly, Burmese society. He argues that gender and hierarchy are intimately connected because the highest values of the Burmese system are autonomy and detachment—both qualities men and male Buddhist monastics are most likely to possess and have the most potential to acquire. Keeler also locates avenues of power for masculinity's others, women and trans individuals, illustrating the flexibility and mutability of hierarchy. Martin Seeger, a historian and Thai-language specialist, centers on gender in Thailand in his book, Gender and the Path to Awakening: Hidden Histories of Nuns in Modern Thai Buddhism. His argument, although not as sweeping as Keeler's, is equally successful in its explanatory power to understand the role of women at the highest levels of Buddhist achievements. He finds that their commitment to meditation, supernatural abilities, and teachings has been recognized in certain contexts, with material culture such as stupas and amulets signifying their realizations of Buddhist truths. Both books add significantly to the conversation about gender in Southeast Asian Buddhist societies.

The title of Keeler's book, in all its complexity, is fitting for its content. This is a big, broad book, the kind that is not often found in the anthropology of religion in Southeast Asia in recent decades. He illustrates the unresolvable tension within Burmese hierarchical society between autonomy and attachment. Keeler uses this dichotomy to unravel the ways that Buddhism, monasticism, meditation, and most importantly gender work in Burmese society. Fieldwork for this book was entirely set in Myanmar, but there are comparative aspects within Southeast Asia, namely Indonesia and Thailand; South Asia; and North American societies.

The introduction places readers right into the action and the title of the book—at a busy intersection in Mandalay. This engaging opening lets readers know they are in capable hands for this journey to understand the significance of hierarchy in Myanmar.

In chapter 1, we are back on the streets to understand more concretely how the traffic hierarchical system works—who is on top and who has some room to maneuver. In this way, Keeler explicitly resists the temptation to theorize the disadvantaged on the road—the motorcyclists and pedestrians—as a romantic if mundane version of the weak fighting back against the strong. Instead, here he sets up the point of the book: in hierarchical systems, people look for opportunities to advance themselves and very rarely are they interested in toppling the whole system in favor of an egalitarian structure. Keeler intends to point out the falsity of understanding egalitarianism as essentially a more just framework for social and political relations.

Chapter 2 is an interesting digression into the world of one Burmese temple. A description of a temple's gatherings, grounds, structures, and activities might be unnecessary in another author's book. However, this thick description is a pleasure to read and sets up the themes Keeler analyzes fully in later chapters.

Chapter 3 focuses on the ideal of the Buddhist monk as a solitary individual without attachments. Although monastics maintain relationships with kin, with laypeople, and among themselves, Keeler finds that solidarity and sociability are actually not significant to the central interests of the Buddhist monkhood. The most important value of the monastic life is autonomy in this hierarchical society in which many attachments are typically necessary. Given this, one reason Buddhism might have become widespread in Burma is precisely because it allows for possibilities of autonomy in a society that is so socially linked.

In chapter 4, Keeler examines Louis Dumont's work on South Asia and finds that the basic idea of hierarchical relations, based on mutual interdependence through difference, works in Burmese society as well. Although he agrees with critiques of Dumont's work as creating a simple binary of East versus West, Keeler must also engage in similar distinctions. In a few instances, he compares American and Burmese society, for the most part in order to destabilize the preference for egalitarianism among his English-reading audience. Because his observations of America are based not on particular contexts of ethnography but rather on being a part of American society, I could see a critique of this kind of argumentation. However, for both Keeler and Dumont, these big questions matter, or as Keeler puts it, we should consider “how useful it might be to ask questions at a very elevated order of magnitude” (Keeler, p. 113). In this way, this book enters into the debate between universal theories of religion and an ethos of particularism updated recently by Francisca Cho and Richard King Squier.Footnote ² Keeler would likely agree with Cho and Squire that religion should be understood as a dynamic and complex system, rather than pieces of data to be analyzed only within their own particular context.

While chapter 5 is concerned with the opportunities within a hierarchical society, delineating how hierarchical calculations inform social interactions and are facilitated through encounter in Burma, chapter 6 highlights submission and power within hierarchical relationships. Because for most people, the ultimate achievement of autonomy, Buddhist enlightenment or nirvana, is a long way away, Keeler portrays the strategies involved in maintaining one's security and safety, including the ambiguously conceived recourse to spirit cults. He perceives relationships with the supernatural as minimizing risks in an arena where detachment is out of reach.

In chapter 7, Keeler argues that the practice of Buddhist meditation is an alternative means to attain autonomy and protection through offering a description of a meditation retreat from his own experience. To be in control of one's mind, rather than vulnerable to its range of thoughts, emotions, and distractions, is the epitome of autonomy.

Chapters 8 and 9 are the highlights of the book for the topic of gender. Keeler argues that attachment is coded feminine while autonomy is seen as masculine. In chapter 8, he discusses two masculine ideals—the sexually virile male head of household and the celibate monk—as two ways of demonstrating autonomy. In chapter 9, Keeler uses this basis of masculinity to understand its others: women, nuns, and trans women. He argues that we can understand the discrimination against women and feminine-presenting trans women by thinking hierarchically. These groups have little recourse to autonomy, except in particular, context-specific situations. Because of this, to be a nun, or thilashin, is highly ambivalent within Burmese society.

Thilashin have the same autonomous ideal as male monks but are unable to reach total separation because they remain obligated to take care of their families. They are unable, in comparison to male monks, to loosen attachment and dependence in relationships, as they receive little respect for taking steps towards detachment. Trans women, in contrast, are criticized because they are giving up the higher status and possibility for autonomy they were given at birth. This anthropological understanding of gender, which fits into Keeler's continuum of autonomy to attachment in this hierarchical society, is persuasive.

In contrast to Keeler's anthropological focus on gender, Seeger takes a historical and textual approach in his well-researched book. His project is to uncover the “hidden histories” of female renunciants in Thailand. He focuses his attention on a few well-known Buddhist women, but offers examples of many mae chis, or nuns, and Thai Buddhist laywomen, or upasika, throughout the book. This information was not always easy to come by. Seeger makes this clear when he states that for the women in his study, “understanding and implementing the Buddha's teaching is of much more importance than spending time talking about oneself or other individuals” (Seeger, p. 4). Researchers of lived Buddhism can relate to this attitude, which makes inquiries into life stories challenging.

Although Seeger's research highlights the ultimate achievements female renunciants have been recognized for, he does acknowledge the gender imbalances within Thai Buddhism and within Thai and Western scholarship on Thai Buddhism in chapter 1. There is no overarching schemata to explain this, as Keeler offers. Seeger is not attempting to explain the system of Thai Buddhism or gender in Thai society, but rather how the accomplishments of women are understood within these communities. Much scholarship about gender in Thai Buddhism is interested in female monks, or bhikkhunis. This is a controversial topic in Thailand because the existence of bhikkhunis is not allowed within the Thai Buddhist sangha. Today the few bhikkhunis living in Thailand were mostly ordained in Sri Lanka and are considered part of the Sinhalese Buddhist community.

Seeger presents the context of scholarship on bhikkhunis, but his findings do not engage in the debate over whether or not women should become fully ordained. Scholars such as Karma Lekshe Tsomo have argued that bhikkhuni ordination is important to give women the conditions the Buddha allowed them to help facilitate enlightenment.Footnote ³ Other scholars, such as Joanna Cook, have found through interviews with mae chi that their role suits these Buddhist women even better than a bhikkhuni would.Footnote ⁴ The mae chis and upasika whom Seeger discusses are lower in the Buddhist monastic hierarchy than bhikkhunis. But because of bhikkhunis’ controversial status, mae chi are actually more accepted than female monks in the Thai Buddhist social hierarchy.

Although Seeger references many Buddhist women in the book, he presents hagiographies of six mae chis and upasikas in chapter 2. He is especially concerned about the possibility of “sainthood” for these Buddhist women. He does not define “sainthood,” and it is a curiously foreign term that evokes Catholicism rather than Buddhism. Seeger notes in chapter 3 that, in contrast to Catholicism, there are no clear processes or boundaries for saints within Thai Buddhism. Sainthood does not necessarily connote nirvana or the status of an enlightened being. Some of these nuns are identified as attaining this state, but others are labeled more vaguely as on the path or stream towards nirvana. And this is the point Seeger hopes to make—it is difficult to understand and define sainthood in modern Thai Buddhism and even more so for the rare cases of female sainthood.

Sainthood, Seeger argues in chapter 4, can be found and confirmed in material objects, such as relics and amulets. Not every practitioner has a person who can verify their achievement level, and practitioners themselves cannot make claims to their own enlightenment, as this is seen to be inappropriate. Because of this, objects that are believed to be sacred in themselves can speak for the accomplishments of female practitioners. Relics that appear after the death of a Buddhist saint and amulets that are proven to have the power of protection let community members know the high level of Buddhist practice this person has achieved.

Seeger argues in chapter 5 that orality and memory are important components within spiritual practice. He finds that texts and reading are not as significant as one would think. Instead, an impressive amount of attention is paid to memorization of texts through listening. Many of the women Seeger studied had amazing memories for Buddhist teachings and used this to reach their attainments and teach others. Although Seeger does not state this outright, it seems that the practice of listening leveled the playing field for women, who were more likely to be illiterate than men pursuing Buddhist teachings.

Chapter 6, titled “Experiencing Gender,” is the most interesting chapter for gendered issues in Thai Buddhism. Here Seeger locates conceptions of gender that the women included in his study experience and highlight. He finds that there is no discussion of inequality or resistance of the gendered hierarchy within monasticism. Instead of gender, these women focus on being born as a human, and the opportunity this birth gives them. One might expect to find sentiments of these women wishing that they would be reborn as a man or that it was their bad karma to be born as a woman. Although women in Thailand have been recorded as suffering due to their gender, they were not a part of the sample Seeger used.Footnote ⁵

This sample was also not interested in structural issues within Thai Buddhism or Thai society. In fact, they perceived gender as ephemeral, unstable over lifetimes, and without soteriological relevance. Seeger, however, does make note of some of the challenges these women faced due to their gender, even if they themselves did not make much of their constraints. It is more difficult for women than men to ordain, renounce, and take part in ascetic practices because a greater sense of duty to the family is expected of them. Although Seeger notes the patriarchal disadvantages these women confronted, he also finds that their gender could have led to quicker realizations of the weariness of life and served as a source of motivation for Buddhist practice. Keeler's argument about hierarchy works here. These women are not interested in attaining equality or dismantling the system. Instead, they have found ways within the hierarchy of Thai Buddhism to be successful in reaching the ultimate goal. In Seeger's selection of mae chis and upasikas, there is a kind of conservatism present, which understands full ordination as unnecessary. The women he studies do not appear to be at all interested in full ordination but only nirvana.

Another aspect of experiencing gender in Thai Buddhism, which comes through in this book, is the need for male monastic allies. All of the women highlighted here were taught and supported by high-ranking male monks. Seeger does not engage with the seemingly oppressive hierarchy of the monastic life for female Buddhists, because he does not encounter it in his texts or interviews about their lives. If we think about these cases with Keeler's terms, although these women do often have to enter into dependent relationships with male monastic allies, they are seeking the ideal of autonomy through the practice of renunciation, meditation, and the realization of Buddhist truths leading to nirvana. In Seeger's book, I would have liked to see more specific comparative analyses of each of the female renunciants’ relationships with male monastics. The distinction between their class and social status is another important point that lingered in the background of this book.

Both of these books in combination, one about masculinity in contemporary Burmese Buddhist society and the other about recent historical female saint figures within Thai Buddhism, allow for a broader conversation about gender in Buddhism. While Seeger finds spaces for women as saints within a male-dominated field, Keeler focuses on the advantages male monastics have within the Burmese social hierarchy. These studies present a complex view of texts and lived religion to understand what it is like to be a man or woman practicing Buddhism in Thailand and Myanmar. They both recognize the constraints of gender as they are experienced in social realities. These scholars both write in clear and accessible ways for an educated audience. Together, The Traffic in Hierarchy and Gender and the Path to Awakening would be excellent choices for classes related to gender in Southeast Asia. Keeler's book fits more into topics of the anthropology of religion and Seeger's more into topics related to women and Buddhism. These two books push the field of gender and Buddhism into more creative, nuanced, and complex directions.