ABSTRACT
The primary material for the present analyses consists of a select sample of cases on female asylum applicants who arrived in The Netherlands on their own (i.e. without a husband, father, brother)l and published case law concerned with women and refugee status. These materials will be the subject of a qualitative analysis in Chapters 3, 4 and 5. Qualitative analysis is a research method that is hard to control or objectify, and it is therefore generally considered desirable for conclusions to be based on more than one source ("triangulation")? In the present chapter, I will present the results of a quantitative analysis at the macro level and a policy analysis at the meso level. In sections 2.1 to 2.4, I will analyse data on the share of women in the refugee populations both world wide and in Western countries. I will also analyse the manner in which Western administrations decide on the asylum applications of men and women respectively. Such data were already available for Canada and specifically collected within the context of the present study for Dutch asylum practice. As there is very little data from other countries, the quantitative analysis will concern these two countries. Sections 2.5 and 2.6 are about the six countries of origin which I selected for this research. In particular, I will analyse the influx of asylum seekers from these countries to The Netherlands; the policy with respect to asylum seekers from these countries of origin; and the results of the policy, measured both by population data and by data from the sample of independently arriving female applicants.
