Final answer:
A caste system is a social structure where individuals' choices in occupation, residence, and social interactions are limited based on heredity. Such systems have existed in various historical contexts, imposing especially strict constraints on women's roles and opportunities for upward mobility.
Step-by-step explanation:
The social categories based on heredity that are restricted in their choice of occupations, residence, and social relationships can be broadly referred to as a caste system. This system of social inequality is deeply rooted in an individual's circumstances of birth, preventing upward mobility out of the social group they are born into. Various historical contexts have seen the manifestation of caste systems, from the Koryo clans sorted into hereditary orders to the rigid class structures of Ancient Greek society and the American racial caste system as observed by anthropologists like Davis, Gardner, and Gardner in 1941.
In such systems, people could be restricted to certain jobs such as civil or military officials, clerks, artisans, or peasants. Women, in particular, faced severe limitations, confining them largely to the private sphere, with very few rights to property, income, or political influence. Although the caste system seems rigid, the historical record suggests that there were instances of flexibility, such as the occasional social mobility of slaves or nuances in the legal and social implications of racial status in societies with complex population diversity.