Caste Discrimination against India's “Untouchables” - Human Rights ...

4. Inadequate development and protection of Dalit women
The obligation to ensure the development and protection of certain groups or individuals
belonging to them is especially relevant for those individuals within the Dalit community
who face multiple forms of discrimination. Dalit women face multiple axes of discrimination,
with the NCDHR asserting:
Dalit women are often described as the oppressed of the oppressed, the
violence and oppression on them being more complex and manifold even
compared to Dalit men. There is [an] inseparable relationship between caste
status, occupation and discrimination. The Dalit woman faces triple
discrimination because she is an untouchable, of a poor class and is a
woman. 119
CERD has also noted that forms of racial discrimination have a “unique and specific impact
on women.” 120 For more on the violence against Dalit women see Sections V(A)(1)(a)(iv) and
VIII(B)(2).
a. Lack of gender equity
Dalit women have unequal access to services, employment opportunities, and justice
mechanisms as compared to Dalit men. In relation to employment opportunities, Dalit
women are allotted some of the most menial and arduous tasks and experience greater
discrimination in the payment of wages than Dalit men. 121 The employment opportunities of
professional Dalit women may also be limited by discriminatory practices that deprive
facilities run by Dalit women of a customer or patient base 122 or require accommodation of
requests of upper-caste community members. 123 In relation to services, Dalit women have
119
NCDHR Response to the Special Rapporteur’s Questionnaire, p. 14.
120
CERD General Comment XXV - Gender-related dimensions of racial discrimination, para. 3.
121
Shah, et al., Untouchability in Rural India, pp. 117-18. For example, in Kerala, Dalit women report that they are tasked with breaking
the roasted cashew nuts produced in factories—a job which over time deforms and stains their palms and fingers. Ibid.
122
Ibid. In Tamil Nadu, for example, Dalit women report that the upper-caste families do not send their children to the community centers
that are run by Dalit women. Ibid.
123
The study also reports that in the village of Telipalash (Kalahandi, Orissa), a Dalit woman, Pralaya Senapti, is the auxiliary nursemidwife—great
achievement for a Dalit woman. However, after administering medicines and immunizations to upper-caste women and
children in the non-Dalit hamlet, her patients bathe and change their saris to purify themselves after she leaves. They ask Senapti to
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