A PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE TO INCREASING WOMEN’S ACCESS TO ELECTORAL JUSTICE According to IFES’ assessment of violence against women in elections in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, there is a lack of awareness among voters and candidates about how to report gender-based violence in elections. 109 Women interviewed for a similar assessment in Papua New Guinea did not know where they should report electoral crimes: “[T]his lack of clarity on the process to report electoral violations … represents a large gap in protection for women in the electoral process.”110 Finding 7: Societal stigma and harmful cultural attitudes keep women from reporting certain electoral justice violations. In many countries, when women report crimes – particularly when those crimes occur in private or domestic spaces or when women face gender-based violence in the context of stepping outside their traditionally prescribed gender roles (as is often the case when women run for office), they face social stigma due to harmful cultural attitudes and restrictive gender roles. Women may also face online harassment, hate speech, and disinformation that targets them for behaving outside restrictive gender norms.111 Women in these contexts may face not only additional social consequences for filing cases but also more tangible ones, like being ostracized by their families and communities, or their husbands filing for divorce. These social norms will differ based on other factors, such as whether women live in more urban or rural areas and whether they belong to other marginalized groups (for example, families often feel they need to “protect” women with disabilities because of their gender identity and disability status, and so might discourage these women from drawing attention to themselves by filing complaints). The way that judicial actors and electoral institutions handle gender-based violence cases (see Finding 4) may re-traumatize women. In Bougainville, IFES found that restrictive gender roles must be addressed in order to decrease impunity for violence against women in elections. 112 In Zimbabwe, women are discouraged from reporting instances of electoral violence and may even be told they deserve to be subject to violence if they do not conform to society’s idea of traditional gender roles. One survivor of violence “was told by a local chief council that she deserved what happened to her because she did not behave according to social norms for women.”113 Cultural attitudes in Papua New Guinea mean that election-related violence that occurs in the home (when, for example, women want to vote for a candidate or party that is different than the one male family members selected) is often not reported “as it is seen as a family affair, and if it does get reported, it is typically handled within the community rather than through the formal legal system.” 114 In Iraq, women candidates were hesitant to report violations related to gender-based violence and hate speech online because of “lack of social progress toward women’s issues, lack of accountability mechanisms, and also citing a fear of retaliation if they reported attacks to Iraqi authorities.”115 The CEDAW Committee found in Haiti that “lack of awareness and reticence to file complaints because of fear of social stigma and prejudice” held women back from reporting gender-based violence crimes.116 Judicial institutions play key roles in ending impunity for electoral crimes experienced by women, but without widespread institutional and cultural changes that more broadly shift harmful societal gender norms and more specifically normalize women’s equal and meaningful participation in politics, the legal system can only do so much to prevent and mitigate these crimes. 109 Dyer, A., Bardall, G., and Rogers, T. A. New Assessment on Violence Against Women in Elections in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. (2019a). IFES – The International Foundation for Electoral Systems. Www.ifes.org. 110 Dyer, Bardall, and Rogers. (2019b). 111 Scott, V. (2021, April 1). Understanding the Gender Dimensions of Disinformation: Overview: Gender & Disinformation. Counteringdisinformation.org. 112 Dyer, Bardall, and Rogers, 2019a. 113 Bardall, Murombo, Hussain, and Greg-Obi. (2018). 114 Dyer, Bardall and Rogers, 2019b. 115 Iraq Foundation. (2022). 116 United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. (2016). 42