Rethinking EU Law Beyond the Liberal Feminist Paradigm

Can a belief in the value of gender equality associated with the lifestyle of the westernized woman be regarded as a reason for persecution and thus lead to the granting of refugee status under the Qualification Directive 2011/95? In the recent case K,L v Staatssecretaris van Justitie en Veiligheid (‘K,L’), the CJEU decided that it can. To this end, it characterized the belief as a type of ‘identificatory’ conviction that was so fundamental to the young women’s life choices that it rendered them part of a ‘particular social group.’ It thereby declined to follow the referring court’s reasoning which had instead conceptualized the belief as a ‘religious belief’ or a ‘political opinion.’

The decision has largely been welcomed as a positive development towards a gender-sensitive EU asylum law (see here and here). In this blogpost, I complexify this reading of the case by showing that it begets a tension between the liberal feminist philosophical paradigm and its critics. Specifically, I argue that the CJEU’s classification of the young women’s belief in the value of gender equality as ‘identificatory’ (as opposed to ‘religious’ or ‘political’) perpetuates a long-standing criticism of the liberal feminist paradigm, namely its failure to acknowledge the private realm as an important sphere for advancing women’s equality.