A PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE TO INCREASING WOMEN’S ACCESS TO ELECTORAL JUSTICE electoral process and outcome. Hence, the ways that electoral disputes are handled can be as important as the final outcomes of those disputes.7 EMBs, EDR bodies, and other electoral actors have an important role to play in increasing women’s access to electoral justice. To achieve electoral justice, an electoral management body or election supervisory body can also use alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes.8 ADR processes are relatively informal, consensus-driven processes that can be used to resolve electoral disputes outside formal judicial and institutional processes. Countries structure their electoral justice processes differently, and rely on different actors, including EMBs, specialized electoral courts and judges, ADR mechanisms, and traditional judicial bodies to resolve election cases. However, every step in the process – from accessing information to filing a complaint and to receiving an effective remedy – must consider and address potential barriers to women’s equal access.9 To that end, this guide aims to provide EMB and EDR actors (including ADR practitioners), and other stakeholders, including political parties and civil society organizations, with resources to increase women’s access to electoral justice. To gain a better understanding of the current state of the gender and electoral justice literature, including gaps in that research, and to help shape specific recommendations for electoral actors, IFES conducted a desk review of the literature on women’s access to electoral justice, participation in elections, and access to justice more broadly. The desk review builds on IFES’s decades of experience strengthening electoral processes, including electoral justice mechanisms, as well as significant research on the issue of violence against women in elections – an area where we know women often struggle to access justice and one that has particularly negative impacts for women voters, election officials, political party members, and candidates.10 IFES also conducted case studies in Kenya and Nepal, two countries that were preparing for major national elections at the time fieldwork was conducted and where IFES has significant history and longstanding relationships with a variety of electoral stakeholders. IFES supplemented the case studies with key informant interviews with electoral stakeholders in Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, and Malawi, bringing additional regional diversity to the key informants. The findings and recommendations included in this guidebook are based on this literature review and data collected from these key informants. Electoral justice & dispute resolution (2024, March 13). IFES – The International Foundation for Electoral Systems. For more on ADR mechanisms see: Guidelines for Understanding, Adjudicating, and Resolving Disputes in Elections (GUARDE). (2024, May 2). IFES – The International Foundation for Electoral Systems. Www.ifes.org. 9 Alternative Dispute Resolution in Elections: A Practitioner Brief | IFES – The International Foundation for Electoral Systems. (2024, May 16). 10 Violence Against Women in Elections | IFES – The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (n.d.). IFES has also completed country-specific assessments in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. 7 8 8