A PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE TO INCREASING WOMEN’S ACCESS TO ELECTORAL JUSTICE forward candidates for both roles. In the 2022 elections, however, parties formed a coalition, putting candidates up for only one role or the other and therefore avoiding the gender quota requirements.67 As a result, though there were 266 women candidates for mayor, only nine were elected, representing 4 percent of mayoral posts. Most women were elected as deputy mayors or vice chairpersons, 78 percent of whom are women.68 As described above, even when countries have quota laws, they are not always implemented properly. Countries have a responsibility to enforce their quota laws, and EMBs and other enforcement institutions have a duty to ensure compliance. It is much more difficult for women party members, candidates, or citizens to bring forward cases related to lack of implementation of the quota law because of the resources required to do so. In the first paper in the IFES Election Case Law Analysis series, a review of gender quota–related adjudicated cases found that, “while courts can play important roles in enforcing laws intended to promote gender equality and protect the equal political participation of women, these efforts will ultimately be ineffective, and even pyrrhic, without both societal and institutional action.”69 The paper examines a variety of countries, including Argentina, Spain, and Kenya, to describe how courts have handled litigation regarding the constitutionality of gender quotas and the enforcement of their implementation. Ultimately, it is clear that rulings regarding gender quota cases have served both to promote and to limit women’s political participation. Before these cases get to the courts, however, the challenges women face when a quota is not implemented properly could result in disputes within their own parties, and they may be reticent to raise issues as party leadership (often dominated by men) could retaliate against them. Gender quota laws not only apply to elected positions; some countries have legal requirements for certain proportions of political party members, political party leadership, or other public or civil institutions to be women. As with gender quotas for elected positions, these regulations are meant to ensure a critical mass of women members so they feel less tokenized and can work together to push forward gender-sensitive policies and policies that are particularly important to women. In addition to the critical mass benefit, institutions that include women as significant proportion of members demonstrate to women who use those institutions’ services that they are spaces for women. The fact that women work in those institutions can make it easier for women who need them to feel comfortable and as if they belong in these spaces. Having more women as part of EDR institutions or EMBs may make women complainants more comfortable filing disputes and pursuing justice, so ensuring the effective implementation of gender quotas that pertain to electoral bodies that are responsible for electoral justice procedures is critical to ensuring women’s access to electoral justice. In addition to quota regulations, campaign and political finance laws can be used to promote gender equality. However, as with the laws described above, implementation is often lacking. In some countries, electoral law stipulates that parties must use a certain proportion of their public funding to promote women’s access to and inclusion in elections. But in many cases, parties do not use this funding to meaningfully promote women’s political participation, instead finding ways to spend it on events and items that support women in politics only superficially. For example, an IFES gender assessment of electoral and political processes in Honduras found that, while parties were required to use a portion of their public funding for women’s empowerment activities, they instead used it for Neelam, A., Shrestha, P., and Giri, K. (2022). Centre for Gender and Politics South Asia. (2022, June). Gender Analysis of Nepal’s Local_Elections - May 2022. ResearchGate. 68 Ibid. 69 Waugh, 2021. 67 36