The Caste Gender System - A Necessary Analytic of Experience?

This paper formulates a conceptual category called the caste-gender system and tends to follow how the institution of caste operates in systematic complicity with discriminatory gender norms. It talks about the responsibility of feminist theories to address the questions concerning caste experiences and mirrors the implications of such discourses on the experiences of the Dalit woman. On the one hand, aspirations of the prevailing strands of feminism to speak on behalf of ‘Indian’ women has often silenced the articulations and impeded the audibility of the Dalit woman. While on the other hand, efforts of ‘retrieving’ the marginal voices has presumed her experiences as given.