LESSONS ON GENDER EQUALITY AND WOMEN’S POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT Conclusion—What Do These Cases Tell Us About Gender Equality? From the adoption of CEDAW in 1979 to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and the Generation Equality Forums in Mexico City and Paris in 2021, the international community has heralded, time and again, its commitment to the principles of gender equality. Yet, as the cases discussed in this paper and included in the Elections Judgments database demonstrate, this collective commitment often breaks down in the face of national implementation. To take women’s representation in national parliaments as one (imperfect) proxy, at just 25.5 percent, we are barely halfway there. That questions related to gender quotas and other affirmative actions designed to operationalize gender equality dominate the gender-related cases in Elections Judgments database is telling in itself. At a minimum, we can see that quotas and affirmative actions 1) are the source of relatively frequent litigation, from constitutional challenges to concerns about their implementation; 2) have been used to varying degrees of success to advance gender equality; and 3) are most powerful when accompanied by an institutional commitment on the part of the courts to enforce both the spirit and the letter of the laws, as seen in the case of Mexico. The cases discussed in this paper also raise important questions for the field. As was previewed in the case of the Muxes, there are some people for whom the requirement to identify (even to self-identify) as a man or a woman is not a meaningful or appropriate distinction. Even when not combined with the possible conflict between LGBTQI+ rights, women’s rights and Indigenous rights, what will happen when a candidate does not identify with one of the two sexes recognized under a gendered quota system and is not willing to “pick one” to exercise his or her political rights, even if doing so could lead to a political advantage? Our language around women’s rights and gender equality is fundamentally grounded in the gender binary, a concept that is less relevant to younger generations and is increasingly likely to become an issue for courts adjudicating gender cases in elections moving forward. ““If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all…. Women must enjoy the rights to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries, if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure.” – Hilary Rodham Clinton, Beijing, 1995 Perhaps more fundamentally, what happens when the courts are the primary (or the only) voice attempting to uphold the rule of law on cases of gender equality and beyond? As seen in Kenya, when a court issues an order to the president to dissolve the Parliament, citing language in the Constitution included for just that purpose, and the 16