UCLA Journal of Gender and Law

Women face greater difficulties than men in establishing asylum in the United States. This is due in part to the fact that the Refugee Act situates asylum primarily in forms of persecution associated with the male experience. Women who seek asylum in the United States because they flee gender-based violence must establish that their persecution occurs on account of their membership in a particular social group. Such a showing is challenging, both in terms of the test to establish membership in a particular social group and because this form of harm is positioned in gendered notions of activities that are societally considered as operating in the private sphere. This Article therefore draws on existing scholarship, but also expands the lens to encourage advocates in this space to consider effective rhetorical strategies employed in the #MeToo movement. It then offers suggestions for how those strategies might be directed at advocacy in the asylum context.