Institutional discrimination

Institutional discrimination is discriminatory treatment of individuals or groups by institutions, expressed through unequal consideration of members of subordinate groups within an organization's policies, procedures, laws, and objectives, and it can affect people on the basis of gender, caste, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, or socioeconomic status. Scholars who coined the term in 1967 distinguished it from individual-level discrimination: because it originates in the operation of established and respected forces within society, it receives far less public condemnation than overtly biased individual acts, even though it can be equally or more damaging. Institutional discrimination often does not require intentional bias on the part of any one person; it can arise and persist through routine organizational structures and procedures that produce discriminatory outcomes regardless of individual intent, which makes it harder to recognize and to address than personal prejudice. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/