International Women’s Day has been recognized since the early 1900s as a way to honor women’s achievements and demand equality.

In 1908 an estimated 15,000 women—incited by gender inequality and oppression—marched in New York City for the right to vote, higher wages, and shorter working hours in the garment industry.

This year, coming off the heels of January’s Women’s March in Washington, D.C., women across the U.S. and around the world are participating in a “Day Without a Woman” strike for “gender justice,” according to organizers. On Wednesday, thousands of women are expected to take the day off from work, abstain from making purchases, and wear red to “act together for equity, justice, and the human rights of women and all gender-oppressed people.”

In solidarity, we’ve selected five stories from our archives that discuss the “Buddhist glass ceiling” for women monastics, gender’s role in the dharma, and more.  

The Man-made Obstacle
Distinguishing between problems of human birth and problems of human making

Bhikkhuni Ordination: Buddhism’s Glass Ceiling
And why it’s high time to break through it

What Does Gender Have to Do with the Dharma?
“Everything,” the late dharma teacher Rita Gross says in this video from Yogini Archives

Of Samurai and Sisterhood
Feminist Buddhist philosophy professor Nancy Baker on practice and the patriarchy

Meet the First (and Only) Woman to Summit Mount Everest Seven Times
Lhakpa Sherpa works as a housekeeper in Connecticut and climbs to provide for her three children.

 

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