Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo’s life makes visible how deeply gender is woven into the structures of Tibetan Buddhist monastic culture. From the outset, she encountered the absence of a full bhikshuni ordination lineage in the Tibetan tradition, which meant that women could not easily receive the same formal status as monks. This limitation was not merely symbolic; it affected access to certain practices, teachings, and forms of recognition. Nuns were often placed lower in the institutional hierarchy, with fewer resources, weaker infrastructure, and less support than monasteries for monks. Such conditions reflected and reinforced a broader assumption that women’s spiritual capacity was secondary, or at least less worthy of investment, than that of men. Within this environment, access to advanced study and practice became a central challenge. Philosophical education, tantric training, and intensive scholastic programs were traditionally directed toward male monastics, leaving women at the margins of the most rigorous forms of training. She often had to assert herself simply to receive teachings that were readily available to monks, and even when admitted, she might be the only woman in settings implicitly designed for men. This extended to the realm of texts and debate: advanced commentaries, formal debate training, and comprehensive instruction were far less accessible to nuns, not because of lack of interest or ability, but because of entrenched institutional patterns. These structural barriers were underpinned by powerful cultural attitudes. In many circles, there persisted the belief that rebirth as a woman was spiritually disadvantageous and that full enlightenment as a woman was unlikely without first being reborn as a man. Women were sometimes regarded as too emotional or insufficiently stable for the highest levels of meditation and philosophical inquiry. Even when a woman like Tenzin Palmo earned respect, it could be framed as her being an “honorary man,” rather than as evidence of women’s equal potential. Such views not only limited women’s roles and leadership, but also subtly shaped the expectations women held about their own possibilities on the path. Her choice to undertake a long solitary retreat in a Himalayan cave brought these issues into even sharper relief. A woman living alone in such harsh conditions faced not only the usual rigors of isolation, weather, and limited resources, but also the social resistance that greeted a Western woman stepping so far outside conventional roles. The very fact of a female practitioner embracing such an extreme renunciate life challenged