ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how women and women's experiences have been invoked so as to encompass women as members of a 'particular social group' (PSG). It demonstrates the imaginative interpretation of PSG and willingness to accept non-State actors as agents of persecution are examples of approaches that have been employed successfully and which must continue to be employed for the effective determination of women's asylum applications. African cases have made a contribution to refugee status determination in the context of women's claims. What can be posited is that they have been instrumental in identifying certain practices, such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), or abuses perpetrated by non-State actors, for example domestic violence, as persecutory. Furthermore, this recognition has allowed women claiming asylum on the grounds of such persecutory treatment to be characterized as belonging to a PSG and thus to be deserving of refugee status and the protection that it affords.
