Caste And Women Analysis

Leela Dube (1996) has written an essay on “Caste and Women” and examine that the gender structure is relay upon caste practice. She further wrote that “the unequal distribution of recourses and exploitive relations of production can be understood only through an enquiry into the principles of kinship governing allocation of resources, devolution of rights to property, rights to services and entitlements”. She argues that the rules made regarding gender is based on the performance of caste, labor, and of sexuality. Women’s are debilitated by the performance of religious ritual that further confirms their caste status; men can make use of those same rituals in escaping caste impurity. Dube (1988) in her further article on “On the Construction of gender: Hindu Girls in Patrilineal India”, argues that the family structure and patterns of kinship are tied to the institution of caste. In the caste system the fact that membership of discrete and distant groups is defined by birth entails a concern with boundary maintained through regulation of marriage and sexual relations. The onus of the boundary maintain falls on women because of their role in biological reproduction. Caste, they impart a special character to the process of growing up female in India.
Jyoti Lanjewar (1996)
She further added that , the exploitation mostly comes from the larger society as well as from the Dalit community itself by giving an example that, the Dalit women has to delivers a baby boy , even if the Dalit families do not have money , they borrow it to celebrate their happiness. On the contrary if the Dalit women have given birth to a girl child then she has to face the tremendous mental and physical harassment with the family. Further she added that gender bias itself begins at birth in respect of Dalit