Original question:

I am a student at Stanford University and I am trying to collect voter turnout data broken down by gender for a project.

I researching on voter turnout rates for women for the following countries: Germany, England, Japan and any African nation. 

Do you know where I might find this information? 

Links to related resources:

• International IDEA Voter Turnout Database - Turnout by Gender
• England: Gender and political participation 
• Liberia: Voter Turnout for 2005 Elections (page 5 has voter turnout statistics by gender)
• United Kingdom: Understanding the 1997 British Election: A Gender-Generation Gap?

ACE Network Facilitator's response:

Many thanks for your question. At present, to our knowledge, there are only a very limited number of countries compiling voter turnout data broken down by gender or age, so unfortunately any global research will only find data available from a few examples. 

International IDEA has collected gendered voter turnout statistics from about ten countries (these are: Barbados, Chile, Iceland, India, Finland, Guatemala, Malta, Puerto Rico and Sweden - perhaps they could be of interest for your research). To access this data, please follow the link indicated above to IDEA's Voter Turnout Database.

One of the main reasons why it is difficult to find disaggregated data on voter turnout is that, in many countries, collecting and publicly displaying disaggregated voter turnout statistics is not allowed, because it is considered to infringe the secrecy of the vote.  One possible way to obtain the disaggregated voter turnout statistics from a few more countries is to contact the electoral management bodies directly in each country that you mention, or the central statistical offices.

ACE Practitioners'Network