Human rights violations and the gender gap in asylum recognition rates

During the recent European refugee crisis, more than two million people applied for asylum in Germany. Female applicants stand a higher chance to gain protection than male applicants. Whilst small on average, this gender gap in asylum recognition rates varies strongly across countries of origin which has remained little noticed. We analyse the gender gap in asylum recognition rates for the 56 major countries of origin of refugees whose asylum claims are decided on over the period 2012–2018. We show that both general or gender-unspecific human rights abuses and gender-specific human rights violations are associated with cross-country variation in the gender gap in recognition rates–but in opposite ways. Specifically, we find that the gender gap is lower for refugees coming from countries with worse general human rights abuses in the form of political terror perpetrated by state agents but is higher for refugees from countries with a higher prevalence of female genital mutilation and a higher prevalence of child marriage.