According to Osho, women’s superior feeling, love, and receptivity are ideal for discipleship and even enlightenment, but mastery requires using sharp reason and argument to transmit the heart’s truth—employing mind as a servant of heart. Hence women often become enlightened devotees, not masters. This isn’t hierarchy but function: like biological roles differ, the essential achievement is realization, not the public role of master.
Women may awaken deeply, but teaching big crowds needs lots of head-talk, so their gift of feeling shows up more as discipleship than as public “mastery,” and what really matters is awakening, not titles.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, women have a better feeling for others than men do. How come there have been no great masters among them so far?
Your question is like: "Why in history has a woman never been a husband?" What can I do? A woman has to be a wife, and there is no suggestion that the husband is higher than the wife. In fact, just the opposite is the case. I have never come across any husband who is not henpecked. If you don't want to become henpecked, then be a freelance lover, then never get married. Marriage simply means you have surrendered your freedom, your individuality -- everything. Yes, when you go out of the house you go like a lion, roaring. But when you come back to the house you come like a rat, trembling. It is a strange thing. This is a factual story I am going to tell you. Akbar, a great Mogul emperor in India -- perhaps the greatest Mogul who has ruled India -- was very curious about…
Why has there never been a single woman enlightened master?
A woman cannot be a Master -- it is not possible. When a woman arrives she becomes a Mistress, not a Master. The fulfilment of a woman is love. The flowering of a woman is love. Mastery is not the goal of the feminine mind; they don't become Masters, they become Mistresses. To be a Master is basically a male effort. Awareness is the way of man, love is the way Or woman. On the path of awareness it is possible to teach; one can become a Master. On the path of love, how can you teach love? You can flower, you can bloom in love, but how can you teach it? Yes, if somebody wants to learn from you, he will learn it, but you will not be a Master. And such women have existed: Rabiya, Meera, Mallibai, Magdalen, Teresa. Such women have existed: Sahajo, Daya, Lalla. Many women…
Someone has asked: Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Jesus, Mohammed, Lao Tzu, Rajneesh—meaning, all men! Then why has no woman ever carried the news of Buddhahood to the world? Is becoming a bodhisattva harder from a woman’s point of view?
Many things have to be understood in this regard. First, woman and man are fundamentally different. Different does not mean higher or lower; they are equal, but opposite. Neither is above, neither below. Equal—but polar opposites. And their polarity is essential; from the union of these two opposites, birth happens and the current of life flows. Because they are opposite there is attraction; because they are opposite there is also love and there is conflict. Love, because there is attraction; conflict, because they are opposite. Between woman and man there can never be a final reconciliation—nor can there be. Their polarity creates a pull, and the same polarity creates attraction. Man is incomplete without woman; woman is incomplete without man. Man wants to be whole with woman; woman wants to be whole with man. To be whole alone is very difficult—until the inner journey begins, one goes on seeking outer…
Why is it that we hear of fewer enlightened women than men?
So Digamberas are right. Swethamberas go on saying that she was a woman: they are more realistic but not right, more factual but not more right. They relayed just a fact, and sometimes facts are not real. Sometimes facts are very fictitious; and sometimes facts can lie so much that fictions will feel ashamed. This is a fact -- that this Mallibai was a woman -- but this is not reality. Digamberas have the right source. They have forgotten about the fact that she was a woman; they have taken her as man. Her whole being must have been manly. Rarely it happens. In politics, in religion, whenever a woman succeeds she is more manly than feminine. A Lakshmibai or a Joan of Arc, they don't look feminine. Just the body, the outer garb is feminine. Inside is a man. That's why they are not known much, because unless you…
You, buddha, jesus, etc. Are all men. You say women are closer to no-mind. Why did you choose a man's body? Why are there no women masters?
It is from Deva Chandan -- of course, a woman who belongs to the lib movement. It is significant. The question has to be understood. It has never been so in the past -- that a woman was ever a great Master -- and it will never be so in the future either. The reason is that the feminine mind, by its very nature, is not aggressive. And to be a Master one has to be aggressive. It has nothing to do with the male-chauvinists. It has nothing to do with the male-oriented society. Your question is almost like this: Why is the man always the father and never the mother? Nothing can be done about it; it is natural. Only once has it happened: let me tell you the anecdote. A priest was in a hospital for an exploratory operation to determine the cause of the abdominal pains from…