Dalit Women Organizing Across South Asia

Within the Fund for Gender Equality’s annual report, this case documents a partnership led by the Feminist Dalit Organization in Nepal with groups in Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka. It shows caste discrimination as a regional system with different legal recognition in each country, while Dalit women confront connected barriers in education, property ownership, dignified work, political participation, and freedom from violence.

The case is valuable because it does not treat Dalit women only as recipients of aid. Organizers gather evidence, build local leadership, pursue public recognition, and create alliances across borders. A cleaner and domestic worker in Bangladesh, for example, can name segregation that the state does not formally recognize as caste. Testimony becomes political knowledge capable of challenging both national invisibility and the gender limits of anti-caste movements.

Because the material appears inside a donor report, success is compressed into program outcomes and individual stories; internal disagreements and long-term funding tensions receive less attention. Readers should pair it with writing by Dalit women and movement organizations themselves. Even with that limitation, the case demonstrates why intersectionality must be institutional rather than rhetorical: regional cooperation matters only when those most affected shape the questions, strategy, and measures of change.

The case appears as “Dalit Rights Activists Break New Ground in South Asia” in UN Women’s Fund for Gender Equality Annual Report 2017–2018, pp. 32–33.