Over the past three decades, the US has developed a robust body of gender asylum law, including claims of women subject to sexual violence or other serious harm for reasons of gender. This body of law both reflects and has been a catalyst for larger shifts in US jurisprudence recognising the international treaty law basis of domestic asylum law. For years such progress was stymied by a dominant Cold War ideological decision-making paradigm and a woefully inadequate and politicised administrative bureaucracy. The growth of a domestic and international women’s rights movement, and more meaningful engagement by the US judiciary, have resulted in substantial changes. Although progress remains incomplete, today there is a significant body of administrative and federal judicial case law incorporating gender into the interpretation of key categories in refugee law, including gender-defined particular social groups (PSG) and gender-based claims under the political, race and religion grounds in the definition of refugee. These more principled developments have proven vulnerable to politics, particularly under the administration of President Donald J. Trump. However, a new approach, based in part on a clearer, regulatory articulation of doctrine, holds promise for the development of a more coherent and principled body of jurisprudence. This article places US gender asylum in the context of the larger political landscape (i.e., the Cold War, and post-Cold War politics). The article also attempts to draw the links between the development of gender asylum law and larger social and legal change movements, including a domestic and international women’s rights movements focused on issues of sexual violence and violence in the home or “domestic violence.”

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女性难民与美国庇护法的发展：1980 年至今

在过去的三十年里，美国制定了一套强有力的性别庇护法，包括对女性因性别原因遭受性暴力或其他严重伤害的索赔。这部法律体系既反映了美国法理学的更大转变，也成为了其催化剂，承认了国内庇护法的国际条约法基础。多年来，这种进步一直受到冷战时期占主导地位的意识形态决策范式以及严重不足和政治化的行政官僚机构的阻碍。国内和国际妇女权利运动的发展，以及美国司法机构更有意义的参与，导致了重大变化。尽管进展仍然不完全，今天，有大量行政和联邦司法判例法将性别纳入难民法关键类别的解释，包括性别定义的特定社会群体 (PSG) 和基于政治、种族和宗教理由的基于性别的主张难民的定义 事实证明，这些更有原则的事态发展容易受到政治的影响，尤其是在唐纳德·J·特朗普总统执政期间。然而，一种新的方法，部分基于对学说的更清晰、规范的表述，有望发展一个更加连贯和有原则的法理学体系。本文将美国性别庇护置于更大的政治格局（即冷战和冷战后政治）的背景下。