For those who need it, evidence that women in the UK do not have equality and suffer institutionalized discrimination.

[Thistledew]

This new research report makes interesting reading: Unsustainable: the quality of initial decision-making in women's asylum claims. The full report can be downloaded from the website here

There are long held concerns about the treatment of women seeking asylum in the UK, and the research findings only deepened this concern. Looking at a sample of forty-five cases from three UKBA regions, Unsustainable found that:

? the UKBA did not accept the credibility of women's asylum claims in the vast majority of cases;

? women were refused asylum on grounds that were often arbitrary, subjective, and demonstrated limited awareness of the UK's legal obligations under the Refugee Convention;

? the UKBA case owners at times displayed a striking failure to understand the nature of the persecution from which women might flee. This poor understanding led to case owners doubting the credibility of applicant?s accounts for no good reason. For example:

? One woman ? whose passport had been confiscated by her husband, and from whom she had been subjected to threats, abuse and humiliation ? was informed by the UKBA that she was not considered a victim of domestic violence because her husband had only tried to hit her once

? One refusal letter made repeated reference to an arranged marriage when considering the case of a woman who had been forced into marriage at fourteen to a man who had subsequently abused her over many years

? At one asylum interview, the case owner stated that they had never before heard the term ?female circumcision?

? a disproportionately high number of the asylum refusals issued to women were subsequently overturned on appeal. 42% of the initial refusals in our sample were overturned by an independent immigration judge (the average across all cases is just 28%); this number rose to 50% when including rulings made after the reconsideration of an initial appeal 


? case law and Country of Origin Information was used selectively or unrepresentatively
Responding to the research, the UKBA has acknowledged for the first time that its own internal figures also show that a disproportionately high number of the refusals issued to women asylum seekers are overturned on appeal.

The executive summary is available here .

Anyone interested?

I see no comparisons or statistics to compare to men here? Are you just moaning that the asylum system is flawed (I might agree with that) or that women get a worse deal than men?

JBellingham - if you read the OP and the report you will see that the importance of it is that it does provide statistical corroboration of discrimination. 50% of cases where a woman appeals against a refusal of asylum by the border agency are later allowed on appeal to the court, compared to the 28% allowed when a both women's and men's cases are considered.

That is an extra 22% of women who are routinely disbelieved or thought not to be at risk of suffering a significant degree of harm, as compared to men who are believed.

What is so impressive about this report is that is does provide a quantifiable example of discrimination in practice.

Dittany - quite.

TBH this on it's own
'At one asylum interview, the case owner stated that they had never before heard the term ?female circumcision? '
had me saying WTFuckign fuck? How can you work with asylum seekers and not have heard of this?

What will the report achieve though?

what is the 'case owner'?

Seth- a 'case owner' is the UK Border Agency civil servant who makes a decision on the persons's claim for asylum. You need to have passed 5 GCSEs to be qualified for that role.

Ilythia- Asylum Aid, who prepared the report, hope to persuade UKBA to let them deliver some training to improve the way the case owners deal with cases. They had to beat UKBA round the head with hard evidence before they could get a concession that things need to improve.

thanks Thistledew. OMG at someone in such a responsible position as that not having heard of female circumcision

the idea of choosing a sample in order to reflect trends in a population is not a radical one, i hope

if the sample is chosen carefully, there is no reason why it would not be valid to draw conclusions from

i would want to know more about their sampling technique/rationale before i judged 45 cases as inadequate for the conclusions made

good lord i sound snarky, apologies to hopeforthebest, i wasn't having a go really

i am having to write lit reviews for a course i am doing, and so the validity of research is v much on my mind

if i could rewrite, i would have said

perhaps it is too small, i would want to see their rationale first before dismissing it out of hand

soz again

Thisteldew - Comparing A against (A+B) is not the same as comparing A against B, this is not a fair statistic.

Chibli- the full report sets out their methodology and shows that their own findings are very close to national statistics.

JB - read the report. You are correct that the comparator I quoted there is not exact, but if you took the womens results out of the national average it would show a greater, not lesser disparaty between the sexes. I think that is obvious to anyone. Do you have a particular reason to be so sceptical of the conclusions?

I am always sceptical of statistics, they can be used to prove anything. Do you have a link to the data (i seem to have missed it)? thanks

JB - the first link will bring you to a page with the full report and summary. I am on my phone now so difficult to do links.

And I will ask again- why do you find the conclusion so hard to accept?

I do not find any conclusion yet, so therefore I neither accept or reject it. I am open minded.

I must be being obtuse, I have looked through the link you posted and the exec summary, I see no evidence that women who apply for asylum are treated any differently than men who apply for asylum?

Yes. You are being obtuse. Maybe read the full report?

Maybe I am being unfair, as being familiar with this area the conclusions of the report are obvious to me.

The report shows that a significantly higher percentage of women are wrongly disbelieved when claiming asylum than men.

This is due to discrimination and prejudice on both an individual and institutional level. Individual, because the UKBA employees consistently find that the violence women suffer, including rape, female circumcision, is not so severe as to amount to persecution; or that it is acceptable for a woman to be returned to a situation were her only source of income would be from prostitution; or that it is culturally acceptable for her to experience some domestic violence. Or just generally that a women is lying. To give but a few examples.

It is instituionalised because UKBA fail to give their employees sufficient training to break down these prejudices and educate them as to the fact that the law does recognise the particular ways in which women suffer persecution and does (to an extent, it's still far from perfect) offer women protection.

I can see the table on page 12 where it states -
23% of women and 14% of men 'recognised as refugee and granted asylum'
72 % of women and 72% of men were refused.
How is this discrimination? or are you talking about the vast study of 45 women that has no equivalent benchmark that is mentioned in the first section?

Because proportionately more women are wrongly refused asylum by UKBA than men. And the reasons given are everything to do with gender discrimination. It's not hard to see.