A PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE TO INCREASING WOMEN’S ACCESS TO ELECTORAL JUSTICE information about key deadlines and rules, thus undermining women candidates’ eligibility and their ability to challenge those decisions. Gatekeeping role of political parties. Beyond failing to provide women candidates with relevant information, political parties were often seen as significant barriers to women’s political participation and to their “The attitude is that women are in politics as a favor not a right.” access to electoral justice specifically. In Kenya, interviewees noted – Key informant interview participant that political parties play an important role as gatekeepers choosing to field women candidates in party strongholds (where people are more likely to elect the party’s representatives regardless of gender) or prioritizing men candidates in those races. One interviewee stated, “the primary process is the often the hardest part; 60 percent of women lose at the primary level – it’s a negotiated democracy.” Therefore, while women might make up the requisite one-third of candidates on a party slate, they are more likely to be nominated in districts where they have less chance of winning. In addition, intraparty dispute resolution mechanisms, which are often the first stop for many candidates attempting to resolve disputes at the primary stage, are not always seen as safe or effective spaces for women candidates to seek redress, given that parties can feel like an “old boys’ club.” When political parties violate laws or policies – or when those policies are so opaque or informal as to be inscrutable – in an effort to exclude women from nominations and the political process generally, women complainants in many countries have nowhere to go to file disputes on intraparty issues. In Nepal, which does not have an intraparty dispute resolution mechanism, male-dominated party leadership decides on candidate nominations in closed-door meetings. A similar phenomenon was described in Malawi, where political parties are headed by men; one interviewee described the nomination process as being carried out “in a clandestine midnight meeting.” Similarly in Honduras, which also does not have formal mechanisms within parties to challenge candidate nomination processes, interviewees reported that, when women candidates were nominated in unwinnable positions and filed a complaint with the national executive committee, no action was taken, and they were called “crazy women.” Stigma associated with bringing complaints. Women who are survivors of electoral violence, especially sexual violence, are often reluctant to bring cases even when they have legal and financial support. In some cases, interviewees attributed this reticence to a lack of faith in receiving justice or being taken seriously by the police. Cases of sexual or gender-based violence are particularly difficult for a woman candidate to bring forward when the perpetrator is a member of her own political party. In Kenya, women’s rights representatives noted that, in some cases of political violence, women candidates don’t expect justice from the criminal justice system or to revisit the results of the election, but they do want some acknowledgment of what happened to them. Therefore, in lieu of filing formal court cases, they were willing to have their cases resolved through the ADR process so they could at least receive an apology from the perpetrator. Interviewees in Honduras echoed this sense of resignation, noting that women did not want to put forward cases because “nothing happens” and that if women fight back against their parties in particular, they will be marginalized and excluded. “If you are a woman interested in politics, you are already ... a social misfit.” – Key informant interview participant In Nepal, interviewees also reported women’s reluctance to draw additional attention from party leaders, their opponents, and the media by filing electoral complaints. According to multiple sources, the media in Nepal covers prominent women by 17