Discrimination and prejudice based on caste, the inherited social hierarchies found particularly in South Asian societies, creating systematic inequality.
From Spanish/Portuguese casta (lineage) + -ism (system or practice); the word caste came into English through colonial accounts of South Asian social structures, and -ism was added to describe the ideology itself.
Casteism is one of the world's oldest and most persistent systems of oppression—lasting longer than slavery in some societies—yet it's barely discussed in Western education despite affecting nearly 2 billion people in South Asia.
Caste systems historically enforced patriarchal hierarchy with rigid control over women's roles, education, and bodily autonomy. Within castes, women bore additional intersectional oppression through purity codes and property rights tied to male kinship.
When discussing casteism, explicitly center women's intersectional experiences—their exclusion from education, control over marriage and sexuality, and labor exploitation within caste hierarchies.
["caste oppression","caste hierarchy","caste discrimination"]
Women's caste resistance movements, particularly in South Asia, have led organizing against both caste and patriarchal control; their scholarship (e.g., Dalit feminists) has reframed casteism as fundamentally gendered.
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