Violence against women in elections (VAWE) refers to types of violence that exist in the exercise of political competition and governance in (at least nominally) democratic states and during democratization processes.[1] Violence against women in elections is a threat to the integrity of the electoral process – it can affect women’s participation as voters, candidates, election officials, activists, and political party leaders, and it undermines the free, fair, and inclusive democratic process (Bardall 2011, Huber and Kammerud 2016). VAWE is a violation of political and human rights and frequently also a criminal or civil code violation that harms voters, candidates, election officials, activists and security and political professionals worldwide, occurring both online and offline. 

Although it has some characteristics in common with the gendered dimensions of conflict and civil war as well as with domestic gender-based violence, it is different in its distinct political nature as well as in its material manifestations including its forms, perpetrators and common victims. Most importantly, it is distinct from wartime and/or domestic violence in terms of its impacts: VAWE is not only a manifestation of inequality but also, significantly, a mechanism that formally institutionalizes women’s subordinate position in society by coercively excluding them from state governance.[2]

Violence against women in elections is a global issue that varies in nature, intensity and form across different contexts. According to an IPU study [3], violence against women parliamentarians is a universal and systemic problem. The study, in which 55 women parliamentarians from 39 countries across five regions were surveyed, found that 81.8 per cent of them had experienced some form of psychological violence from members of the public and fellow parliamentarians; 44.4 per cent had received threats of death, rape, beatings or abduction during their parliamentary terms; 65 per cent had been subjected to sexist remarks, primarily by male colleagues in parliament and from opposing parties as well as their own.

In 2011, Carter Center observer teams in Egypt reported that in several areas of the country, women were threatened with divorce if they did not vote as their husbands ordered. In interviews conducted in 2010 by International Alert, women who had stood as candidates in Sierra Leone reported unequal access to political party support, verbal and physical violence, and threats to themselves, their supporters, and their husbands. In 2013, focus group participants in Bangladesh told IFES that verbal sexual harassment, as well as physical violence, is commonly directed at women in public at demonstrations and perpetrators have included police officers providing security. Online harassment is cited by many women as a serious threat; Kenyan focus group participants in 2015 noted that a female County Assembly candidate lost a race because of cyber-bullying in which she was depicted as a lesbian in doctored photos. In late 2009, months before elections, members of the paramilitary police under the ruling military junta in Guinea publicly raped scores of women inside the national soccer stadium as part of an attack on a pro-democracy demonstration that also killed at least 150.

The term “violence against women in elections” (VAWE) is an umbrella for several distinct but related issues. Violence against women in politics is understood as the supra-category encompassing violence that takes place outside the direct electoral process but within the context of peace-time politics. VAWE is, as the name suggests, restricted to violence directly connected to an electoral process.

IFES defines the broad umbrella of “violence against women in elections” (VAWE) as “any harm or threat of harm committed against women with the intent and/or impact of interfering with their free and equal participation in the electoral process during the electoral period. It includes harassment, intimidation, physical harm or coercion, threats, and financial pressures, and it may be committed in the home or other private spaces, or in public spaces. These acts may be directed at women in any of their roles as electoral stakeholders (e.g. voters, media, political actors, state actors, community leaders, or electoral officials).”[4]

Within this umbrella, there are two types of VAWE/P: gender-motivated political violence and gender-differentiated political violence.[5] These reflect distinct but equal components of gender-based violence against women as defined by the Council of Europe: “Violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately[.]”[6] These distinctions are vital because different types of violence call for different types of responses.

• “…Because she is a woman”: Gender-motivated political violence (GMPV) is harm that violates an individual’s or groups’ political rights on the basis of their gender identity. This distinct form of violence is motivated by a desire to repress, deter, control, or otherwise coerce the political rights of the victims because of the victim’s gender. Where GMPV specifically targets women in order to enforce patriarchal control of democratic institutions, it may be described as violence against women in politics.[7]
• “…That affects women disproportionately”: The second key concept is gender differentiation in the manifestations of politically motivated violence (gender-differentiated political violence, GDPV). Simply put, women experience political violence in different ways and frequencies than men do. The most notable differences are in the types of political violence that women experience more frequently than men (e.g., sexual, psychological, economic), the locations where political violence occurs (including in domestic and cyber spheres) and the perpetrators involved (including community, family, and intimate partners). [8]

Women are targeted with electoral violence while occupying a variety of stakeholder roles. In some cases, they are targeted because of their political actions or affiliations, and in others, they are targeted because they are women participating in politics. These examples involve many circumstances found in globally-accepted definitions of violence against women (VAW) or gender-based violence (GBV) against women, including verbal or physical sexual violence, violence by intimate partners and community leaders, gender-based discrimination against women in professional circles, and violence in private spaces.14 The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank and others further underscore that GBV impacts women and girls more than other populations and that women with disabilities, as well as lesbian, bisexual and transgendered women suffer violence at even higher rates.

The experiences of these women also reflect circumstances commonly found in globally-accepted definitions and patterns of electoral violence, including public intimidation of opposition supporters and physical and psychological violence against voters.

UN Women and UNDP jointly developed a programming guide ‘Preventing Violence Against Women in Elections’ in 2017. The guide identifies the specific components of VAWE, including types, tactics, victims and perpetrators, and offers various options to prevent and mitigate them based on current good practices. The aim is to provide examples of existing practices and options for policy and programming responses for different electoral stakeholders and to support technical assistance providers to take measure against VAWE. In order to provide programming guidance, it introduces the VAWE Prevention and Matrix (See below Matrix 1) that identifies six main action points for preventing and eliminating VAWE based upon the phases of the electoral cycle and the role of various stakeholders—i) mapping and measuring VAWE, ii) integrating VAWE into election observation and violence monitoring, iii) legal and policy reform to prevent and respond to VAWE, iv) preventing and mitigating VAWE through electoral arrangements, v) working with political parties to prevent and reduce VAWE and vi) raising awareness and changing norms. Drawing good practices from all the regions, it offers diverse menu of programming options with concrete examples of activities for each action point that stakeholders could implement.

 Source: UN Women and UNDP. “Preventing Violence Against Women in Elections” A Programming Guide” 2017.[9]

IFES has developed a suite of tools to better understand and respond to the unique issues related to gender-based election violence, including research and data tools, legal strategies and digital initiatives. This includes the IFES “VAWE Legal” approach, which helps ensure justice and facilitate change of institutional and societal attitudes, beliefs and behaviors on VAWE through targeted legal analysis, aid and advocacy. IFES has developed several tools to monitor and report on VAWE including through field assessments, a methodology for monitoring the presence of VAWE online in social media, and tools to integrate VAWE reporting into general electoral monitoring programs. Recognizing the existence of an ecosystem of ICT-facilitated violence against women online, IFES engages multiple targeted tools to stop VAWE online in its tracks, including a VAWE Online sentiment analysis tool and partnerships with digital entrepreneurs. The Carter Center increasingly integrates VAWE reporting into their election observation activities and is developing methods of data collection and analysis about online VAWP in the context of elections. The National Democratic Institute has also developed a number of helpful tools to respond to VAWE. These include a toolkit for domestic observers, a public awareness campaign called #NotTheCost and strategies to prevent online violence.

In March 2018, an Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on Violence Against Women in Politics (VAWP) was organized in New York, co-organized by UN Women, the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR), and the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women (SRVAW), in collaboration with the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI). This meeting provided the space for a diverse, specialized and influential group of experts to identify institutional, advocacy, and legal means to enable women to fully realize their political rights, and end impunity for those who seek to stifle or suppress them in electoral processes but also other areas of political participation.[10]

[1] Bardall, G. “Violence, Politics and Gender”. Contentious Politics and Political Violence. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Feb. 2018.

[2] ibid

[3] http://archive.ipu.org/pdf/publications/issuesbrief-e.pdf

[4] IFES. “VAWIE: A Framework for Assessment, Monitoring, and Response” 2017. http://www.ifes.org/publications/violence-against-women-elections

[5] https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xmlui/handle/1866/18513

[6] Art. 3 d, Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence

[7] https://www.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc=/Documents/Issues/Women/SR/IFES.pdf&action=default&DefaultItemOpen=1

[8][8] https://www.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc=/Documents/Issues/Women/SR/IFES.pdf&action=default&DefaultItemOpen=1

[9] http://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2017/preventingvaw-in-elections.pdf?la=en&vs=2640

[10] http://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2018/egm-report-violence-against-women-in-politics-en.pdf?la=en&vs=4036.