The status quo involves sending women back to the threat of persecution  Sometimes, women who are persecuted by their government end up running from their country just to be sent back from the EU when their asylum application is rejected. Under the current legal system, the problems of women from countries that implement Sharia Law and other forms of discrimination are often not considered sufficient grounds for asylum. This is because refugees are only considered to be refugees ‘owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’, so it does not include persecution for gender. The consequences can be of two kinds. The first and the worst is sending them back home where to face harsh punishment for trying to leave. This was the case with two women who applied for asylum in Great Britain in 1997 and were denied this right even though they faced death by stoning upon return.  Even if the women are not sent home immediately due to a prolonged appeals process they are left in detention centers, in uncomfortable conditions and unable to get a job or do anything while they wait. Those who are denied entry are left with nothing only a long depressing wait to be returned to the horrible conditions from which they thought they had escaped.  Cleaver, Olivia F., ‘Women Who Defy Social Norms: Female Refugees Who Flee Islamic States and Their Fight to Fit into American Immigration Law’, Rutgers Journal of Law &amp; Religion,   Women for Refugee Women, ‘Refused: the experiences of women denied asylum in the UK’, refugeewomen.com, 2012,   The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘Convention and Protocol relating to the status of refugees’, unhcr.org, 1951,  p.14