A PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE TO INCREASING WOMEN’S ACCESS TO ELECTORAL JUSTICE Many of the answers to these questions underscore the findings from the desk review and highlight ongoing needs and opportunities that women face in accessing electoral justice. The findings also point to recommendations for electoral actors and advocates to address these gaps and challenges, which are further detailed in Section 4. While gender-disaggregated data on electoral disputes are generally not available at the national level, let alone globally, one consistent theme emerged across the interviews conducted for this research: Women are underrepresented as litigants on electoral matters, even relative to their general underrepresentation in the candidate pool. Stakeholders identified a number of reasons why women are less likely to bring claims (even in hyper-litigious electoral environments like Kenya) regardless of the merits of their cases. Interviewees noted that men are much more likely to bring cases because feel they have been wronged, regardless of the merit of their claims, and to come to court to “demand justice” or a recount of a vote. “For most women, cases are violence-related cases. Maybe they’ve been beaten up or called bad names. For men, it’s usually contesting the results of an election.” – Key informant interview participant Women are more likely to be in court because they have been the victims of electoral violence or obvious crimes. This reluctance to come forward and bring electoral complaints is grounded in both practical concerns and societal and structural barriers. What are the practical challenges women face in accessing electoral justice? Resource constraints. The primary constraint women face in filing electoral disputes is one of resources: time, information, and funds. In Kenya and Malawi, while political parties may provide attorneys to candidates to pursue electoral justice, women candidates were seen to receive less support from their parties, particularly in the case of intraparty disputes. In both countries, having an attorney to bring a complaint successfully was seen as both necessary and often prohibitively expensive. Further, interviewees noted that women candidates were often less aware of the process they needed to follow in filing court cases and, importantly, in preserving and capturing evidence contemporaneous to a particular incident – another area where political party support was seen to be more available to men. Interviewees in Nepal and Malawi also noted that many voters in general, and women in particular, are not aware of their legal rights around the electoral process, making it difficult to know whether they have been victims of electoral violations. Nor are they aware of the process for filing electoral complaints. This latter issue extends to women candidates and prominent women on party committees. Lack of information on the electoral law presented different challenges in other contexts. Interviewees in Guatemala and Indonesia noted that one of the most prevalent issues with respect to women and electoral justice is that many women candidates and voters are not provided information on what actions are illegal in political campaigns. In Indonesia, for example, where money in politics is a particular concern, a number of women candidates – more likely than men to be running for office for the first time – have been found guilty of electoral offenses because they were not aware that customary practices such as gifting food or money were not allowed during campaigning. Often, this information should have been provided by their political parties but wasn’t – a phenomenon that some interviewees attributed to parties’ overall lack of support for women candidates. When the Electoral Commission of Nepal (ECN) communicates with political parties, election officials most regularly work with party leaders – predominantly men – and will sometimes provide information to party leaders for them to share with candidates rather than delivering the information to candidates or applicants directly. This information imbalance has led to party leaders withholding 16