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 .

I am not doubting any of the things you claim, I am just looking for the evidence that you said was there.

Keep trying! It will come to you eventually.

According to the report you posted, exactly the same percentage (an unlikely statistic so I suggest massaging) of men as women were refused asylum.

It may be hard to understand, if you have no knowledge of the asylum process, so let me explain.

When someone seeks asylum in the UK, their claim is first considered by the UK Border Agency. If it is refused, that person has a right of appeal to an independent Tribunal, where hopefully, they will be represented by a lawyer who can put forward their case according to the law.

What this report shows, is that a significantly higher percentage of women have their appeals allowed, as compared to men, ie. more women were wrongly disbelieved by the Border Agency.

The report says, in the next paragraph to the one that you read:

"Using these figures it can be calculated that 28% of applicants were granted some form of leave at
initial decision and 72% were refused. This proportion is the same for male and female applicants.
Home Office statistics state that 4,150 asylum appeals were allowed by the Tribunal in 2009,
constituting 28% of all asylum appeals heard.24 These figures are not disaggregated by gender.
However, after being given advanced notice of the findings of this research, the UKBA stated that
a disproportionate number of refusals of applications from single females are overturned at appeal
and that it is analysing the reason for this.25 The UKBA have confirmed that internal management
information for all asylum appeals heard in the last 12 months suggests a similar pattern, with an
allowed appeal rate of 35% for women where the asylum decision was made within 6 months of
application and 41% where the asylum decision took longer than 6 months. The comparable rate
for men is 26%, irrespective of how long the decision took to make."

Now do you see?

But the findings on this report (as someone posted earlier) are based on 45 women. 45!! out of 24675 (their yearly number of 8225 x 3 years).

This equates to a 0.18% sample. That is a nonsense statistically. Also there is no information as to how they were selected.

I just flipped a coin 5 times, i got 4 tails and a head. It doesnt mean that tails is 4 times as likely as heads to appear, it means my sample is unrealistic.

For this to be meaningful they should say how the people were selected and should have interviewed a larger sample.

Oh I give up! Will you read the report! Those figures are not just based on the 45 person sample.

It seems that misogyny is (from the sample in this thread) definitely founded in stupidity and/or wilful ignorance.

But bless you for sitting there flipping a coin just so you can back up the argument you want to have. That is really sweet of you

Just because there is a remedy for discrimination does not negate its existance in the first place.

Because for the large part, the law does protect womens rights. If a woman is able to get her case brought before a Tribunal, and have a suitably knowledgeable lawyer to represent her, then she has something approaching a fair chance of having her rights protected. The issue is the home office officials failing to apply the law for discriminatory reasons or failing to believe a woman is telling the truth because of some biased attitude.

Overt discrimination is easy to tackle. For instance if the protction laws were different for men and women that would be easy to see and easy to tackle. It is the more subtle forms of discrimination such as attitudes of individuals and institutions that are so insidious and hard to point to and demonstrate they exist.

That is why I think this report is exciting from a feminist point of view. It actually puts a statistical marker on the discrimination against women that is usually so hard to evidence, apart from anecdotally.

If the qualification for a case owner is five GCSEs, that means it's done at administrative officer level, what they used to call clerical officers. Decisions on people's lives are being made at the second-lowest level in the civil service. £15k a year - that's what I was paid to do the filing in my last job.