text and context: Buddhist sex roles/culture of gender revisited

TLDR

Recent changes in Thai society may have liberated women from some traditional limitations, yet a recent analysis of Thai Buddhist conceptions of female gender questions the contemporary relevance of the long‑standing sexual division of labor, arguing that women are considered more “attached” to worldly objects than men. The paper finds that evidence supports the Thai sexual division of labor, with men in monastic and bureaucratic roles and women in entrepreneurial activities, and that alternative textual interpretations claiming women are less “attached” are misleading because they ignore the religious, social, and historical contexts, reinforcing that both Buddhist conceptions and women’s actual situation in traditional Thai society reflect greater “attachment” than men’s. Keywords: division of labor, sex roles, textual interpretation, social and cultural change, Buddhism, Thailand.

Abstract

Drawing on interpretations of popular Buddhist “texts,” a recent analysis of Thai Buddhist conceptions of female gender has questioned the contemporary relevance of a long‐standing sexual division of labor in Thai society based in a view that, in Buddhist terms, women are deemed to be more “attached” to worldly objects than are men. This paper argues that the available evidence supports rather than impugns the view of a Thai sexual division of labor in which men specialize in Buddhist monastic roles and political‐bureaucratic occupations while women specialize in economic‐entrepreneurial activities. Further, it argues that the textual interpretation offered as an alternative to the view of women as relatively “attached” is misleading in that it does not sufficiently address the religious, social, and historical contexts in which the popular texts are found. Viewing the texts in their relevant contexts supports the view that both Buddhist conceptions and the actual situation of women in traditional Thai society is one of relative “attachment” compared to the conceptions and situation of men. Recent changes in Thai society could be seen as having “liberated” women from some traditional limitations and influenced the manner in which women's “attachedness” is manifested in contemporary Thailand. [division of labor, sex roles, textual interpretation, social and cultural change, Buddhism, Thailand]