A PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE TO INCREASING WOMEN’S ACCESS TO ELECTORAL JUSTICE the ward chairperson, a woman ward member, a Dalit woman ward member (the two reserved seats for women are required as part of the Constitution of Nepal, and the Dalit requirement is included in the Local Elections Act of 2017), and two additional ward members. According to the Local Elections Act, if parties put forward candidates for the positions of both the mayor and deputy mayor (or the chair and vice chair, in the case of rural municipalities), one of those candidates must be a woman. These elections occur every five years. There is no quota specific to women with disabilities, and, in both 2017 and 2022, only a few women with disabilities 152 were elected to local government and none were elected at the provincial or national level. Despite these quotas, there is still a lack of meaningful representation for women in Nepali politics. A party is only required to run a woman candidate for the post of mayor or deputy mayor position (or the chair or vice chair position) if it runs candidates for both positions; two parties that join together to form a political party coalition may be able to avoid that requirement, as occurred in the 2022 local elections.153 Instead of running candidates for both positions, one party in the coalition would run a man for mayor and the other party would run a man for deputy mayor. This is one reason why there were fewer women candidates in the 2022 local elections than in 2017. Five ruling parties fielded candidates under an alliance during the May 2022 local elections. 154 While the gender quota is intended to ensure that local governments have at least one woman in leadership, it is also meant to incentivize political parties to invest in women gaining experience in politics so they can continue to rise through the ranks. In 2017, in elections for 753 deputy mayor (or vice chair) positions, 700 women (93 percent) were elected, while 18 women were elected as mayors. Given the large number of women who have gained experience serving on local bodies, it is notable that political parties did not choose more women candidates to run as mayors from this pool of women in the 2022 local election. However, many interviewees noted that parties’ attitudes towards women in deputy mayor or vice chair positions is that they were “given” these positions because of election quotas (that is, they didn’t “deserve” them) and that they had their turn in leadership, so the time has come for another woman to have her turn. Thus, rather than building political experience, political parties seem unconcerned with meaningfully engaging qualified women as candidates or elected officials. Multiple interviewees noted that the women who are put on ballots are often the relatives or wives of party leaders rather than women who are genuinely interested in and qualified to run for these positions. Women who are elected to the roles sometimes bring their husbands to meetings, and attendees will address the husbands instead of the elected women. In addition, despite the reserved seats for Dalit women in local councils, parties left 123 of those seats open, with some interviewees claiming this vacancies were due to a lack of qualified Dalit women.155 While this excuse is often used to leave gender quotas unfulfilled (i.e., parties often say there aren’t enough qualified or interested women to nominate), the population of Dalit women is not evenly distributed throughout Nepal, so there may be areas where the few Dalit women may not be interested in running for those seats. 152 IFES is aware of six women with disabilities elected in local government, but it is possible that there are others who have not selfidentified and about which IFES is not aware. 153 “Section 17 (4) of the Local Level Election Act-2017 says a political party must field a woman as candidate for either chief or deputy chief, it says this provision does not need to be followed if parties are fielding candidates under an alliance–if a party is fielding candidate for just one of the two top posts.” See: Section 17 (4) of the Local Level Election Act-2017 (Nepal). ACE: The Electoral Knowledge Network; and Pradhan, T. R. (2022, May 28). How women candidates fared in local polls. Kathmandu Post. 154 Ibid. 155 Pradhan, T. R. (2022, May 10). Despite law, Nepal fails to achieve Dalit women representation in wards. Kathmandu Post. 57