Asylum in the U.S.: domestic barriers to gender-based protection

Due to the lack of reference to gender within asylum law, gender-based persecution has been widely debated as falling outside the scope of international protection. Although the U.S. has seen some legal success in securing asylum for seekers with these types of claims through a more flexible use of the particular social group category, there continues to exist a lack of consistency in the general approach to determining these cases at the procedural and judicial level. Given that U.S. asylum law itself has not changed, this deviation in interpretation and adjudication can be attributed to changes in political leadership and domestic policies. In looking at the asylum determinations of genderrelated cases from two recent contrasting presidential eras, it is clear that the judgment of these claims and the level of expansion of the PSG category to include gendered groups are largely subjective to executive approaches to asylum and immigration policy, as well as preexisting domestic factors that influence judicial decisions.