INTRODUCTION

This research arises from a sense of alienation that I often feel towards Western feminist discourse on Buddhism. Although many Western feminist works are inspiration to me, from time to time, I find that Western feminist works do not necessarily speak to my experience as an Asian Buddhist woman. In order to provide a bridge between feminist agitation and the reality of Buddhist women, I set the purpose of this research as to explore factors that affect the welfare of Buddhist nuns. Even though I wish to study Buddhist women in general, a research as such might be too broad in scope. Thus, I focus on the study of Buddhist nuns only. To do so, I focus on a comparative study of Buddhist nuns in contemporary Sri Lanka and contemporary Taiwan. Hopefully, through a comparison, those factors might become more apparent than by studying a single tradition in isolation.