THE PRIMARY FEMINIST criticism of Buddhism is that dharma teachers are most often men. Feminists have responded with different solutions to this problem. One obvious solution is to make structural changes to ensure that women are trained and promoted as teachers. However, some feminists have argued that giving dharma teachers any real authority is itself a patriarchal practice that cannot be redeemed by encouraging women to become teachers.
Many Westerners are deeply suspicious of the authority that a Vajrayana or Zen teacher has over his or her students. These suspicions regarding unlimited teaching authority grew particularly after scandals involving abuses of power that rocked North American Buddhism in the 1980s. Nevertheless, from the point of view of Buddhist practice, there are limits as to how egalitarian and democratic Buddhism can become. While power has been and can be
