Once a woman has that ordained status, she can engage herself in doing many good works for society, like teaching, preaching for women, and so on. Some of the problems that women have cannot be handled by monks. If I have aproblem about abortion or menopause, for example, the monks cannot handle these kinds of questions. If ordained women helped the monks guide the women, it would be much better. If we have fullyordained nuns, we could open up the horizon of different activities for women.
People believe that if they make an offering to a monk, they get merit.
But if they make an offering to a woman, they don't get merit, because women are not ordained. I see that we are living in a world full of crisis. We are being hypocritical about many things. In my work in Thailand, I do not talk about ordination of women because that is a very sensitive issue. I have to work at the grass roots, and talk at the level of people's understanding.