Daoist Ways of Empowering Women

Daoists have always lived in a highly gendered society, Chinese culture codifying life in terms of yin and yang and seeing females as weak and inferior. Daoist balance this in three different ways. First, the Daode jing counterbalances male-centered culture by extolling yin-type values and forms of behavior, without however yet reversing or overcoming established stereotypes. Daoist communities, second, do away with stereotypes and actively promote gender neutrality, leveling the playing field between the sexes, classifying people on the basis of personal skill and social contribution rather than sex. Daoist monastics and immortals, third, actively ungender practitioners. Thus, all monastics wear the same hairdo and the same vestments, participate equally in the tasks of the institution, and address each other in an intentionally ungendered way. They thereby create a new level of androgynous living, actively liberating the individual from the confines of the appropriate.

Venue: Taoist College

Level 4, Lorong Koo Chye Sheng Hong Temple Administration Building

15 Arumugam Road

Singapore 409960

Professor Livia Kohn graduated from Bonn University, Germany, in 1980. After six years at Kyoto University in Japan, she joined Boston University as Professor of Religion and East Asian Studies.

She has also worked variously as visiting professor and adjunct faculty at Eötvös Lorand University in Budapest, the Stanford Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Union Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, and San Francisco State University.  

Her specialty is the study of the Daoist religion and Chinese long life practices. She has written and edited thirty books, as well as numerous articles and reviews.  

She has served on numerous committees and editorial boards, and organized a series of major international conferences on Daoism. editor of the Journal of Daoist Studies.