This paper looks at the professional alternatives that Buddhism offered to women by analysing the important role played by a female master in the as yet little studied Dhūta movement, a form of ‘heretical’ Chan Buddhism that flourished during the final years of the Jin dynasty and afterwards in the Yuan dynasty. By examining the descriptions of female master Jizhao and male master Puguang, as seen in epitaphs composed by officers-literati and preserved in a Bejing gazetteer dating back to the mid-fourteenth century, this paper aims to highlight some features of the Dhūtaists' discourse of femininity and also to point out the differences vis-à-vis orthodox Chan constructs, in order finally to evaluate whether such a discourse could have an influence on the general definitions and content of gender roles.