Policy Studies

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Conceptualizing more inclusive elections: violence

against women in elections and gendered
electoral violence

Paige Schneider & David Carroll

To cite this article: Paige Schneider & David Carroll (2019): Conceptualizing more inclusive
elections: violence against women in elections and gendered electoral violence, Policy Studies,
DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2019.1694651

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POLICY STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2019.1694651

Conceptualizing more inclusive elections: violence against

women in elections and gendered electoral violence
a
Paige Schneider and David Carrollb
a
Department of Politics, The University of the South, Sewanee, USA; bThe Carter Center, Atlanta, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Violence against women in politics and throughout the election Received 21 May 2019
cycle has been documented as an impediment to the free and Accepted 23 May 2019
equal political participation of women, and to the conduct of
KEYWORDS
inclusive elections. Academic research and practitioner Gender; women; elections;
assessments have raised the profile of this global problem, and political violence; election
draw attention to key challenges in theory development, the violence; intersectionality
operationalization of concepts, and the creation of shared
measures for data collection. This article seeks to contribute to the
scholarship by positing a theoretical framework that situates
violence against women in elections (VAWE) at the intersection of
gender-based violence and political violence. We examine the role
of gender in relationship to targets, perpetrators, motives, and
forms of electoral violence to demonstrate the importance of
studying violence motivated by gender discrimination alongside
more conventional motives of electoral violence. The analysis is
informed by examples drawn from field research in Uganda.

Introduction
The study of the relationship between gender and political violence has flourished in the
last decade with more scholars interested in women’s experiences with violence, but also in
their roles as political actors on the international stage (Enloe 1990; Cockburn 1998; Moser
and Clark 2001; Mazurana, Raven-Roberts, and Parpart 2005; Sjoberg 2014, 2016; Davis
2017). Gender is relevant to our understanding of political violence in a multitude of con-
texts such as war, peacekeeping operations, and acts of terrorism. It is increasingly clear
that gender also matters to our understanding of electoral violence (SAP 2008; Valverde
2011; Bardall 2013, 2015; 2016; Cerna 2014; Zabiliute 2014; Drummond 2015; Piscopo
2015, 2016; Bjarnegard 2016; Krook and Sanin 2016a; Krook 2017). Scholars and prac-
titioners working at the intersection of gender and electoral violence have provided evi-
dence from the field that documents violence against women in the context of
campaigning and elections, and suggests that it is a global problem (Bardall 2011,
2015; Ballington 2016; Bjarnegard 2016). Violence against women in elections undermines
the integrity of elections by inhibiting women’s equal participation as voters, election
officials, candidates, and party leaders, among other roles. Reflecting the growing

CONTACT Paige Schneider [email protected] The University of the South, Department of Politics, Sewanee,
USA
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 P. SCHNEIDER AND D. CARROLL

awareness of the problem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against
Women recently convened a working group and announced a new initiative to develop
global indicators and gather data on the phenomena.1
Traditional gender roles, along with conceptions of masculinity and femininity that
place men and women in roles associated with different social spheres, means that
public political activity is often perceived as a male preserve in many countries around
the world (Sheard and Dunning 1973; Matthews 2016).2 Politics as a male preserve
becomes a domain where men may feel entitled to lay claim to positions of power, and
women who transgress these expectations may face ridicule, harassment, or worse. This
sense of entitlement can lead to male resistance to women’s incursions into these
spaces. This backlash effect (Mansbridge and Shames 2008; Krook and Sanin 2016a,
126) results in threats and actual acts of violence against women in politics. The movement
of women into male preserves can be perceived as a challenge to the social order and to
gendered power relations. This suggests that violence against women in politics and
during elections is more than just a case of individual men attempting to deter individual
women from participating. When motivated by systemic gender discrimination and mis-
ogyny, violence against women in politics and during elections becomes an instance where
men as a group consolidate and monopolize political power, and limit or prohibit the par-
ticipation of women as a group.
The backlash against women in politics is a serious threat, nonetheless women continue
to enter politics and exercise political agency in a variety of roles. Studies of political violence
during civil wars, in revolutionary movements and in other types of conflict scenarios find
that females are not only the victims of violence, but may perpetrate violence (Moser and
Clark 2001; Sjoberg 2016). The increasing numbers of women participating in electoral poli-
tics may subsequently increase the potential for conflict and violence between women, who
often compete for power under constraints such as limited resources and limited numbers
of elected or appointed positions (Expert Group Meeting 2018, 15). Studying election
related violence requires a gendered lens if we are to uncover and better understand patterns
of targeting and perpetration, and clarify when and how gender matters. Existing
frameworks in the conventional study of electoral violence fail to consider its gendered
dimensions. This results in an incomplete understanding of who is affected by election
related violence and the range of harms involved in the different forms and types of violence.
This article offers a new theoretical and conceptual framework for considering the
relationship between gender and electoral violence. The framework posits that violence
against women in elections (VAWE) is a subset of gendered electoral violence and as
well as a subset of both political violence and electoral violence.3 We draw examples
from field work conducted in Uganda in 2018 and 2019 to elucidate the extent to
which electoral violence may be gendered, including instances in which women perpetrate
violence against their opponents.
In the first section of the article, we review the literature on the relationship between
electoral violence and the integrity of elections, and consider the place of gender as a vari-
able in conventional studies of electoral violence. In this review we also summarize the
emerging scholarship on women’s experiences with violence, intimidation, and harass-
ment in their roles as voters, candidates, and other political stakeholders. Then, we turn
to a discussion of our methods for the Uganda case material included in the analysis.
Finally, we offer an alternative gender sensitive conceptual framework which draws on
 POLICY STUDIES 3

insights from both academic scholarship and practitioner assessments to suggest a more
inclusive and intersectional approach to the study of election violence.

Electoral integrity and electoral violence

Electoral integrity can be undercut by a wide variety of irregularities or “electoral malfunc-
tions” that can undermine democratic processes and inclusive participation, including
vote buying, suppressing voter turnout, unequal access to media across parties and candi-
dates, or tampering with vote counts at the ballot box (Birch 2011; Norris 2014). In
addition to these and other such efforts to manipulate or subvert the electoral process,
electoral violence constitutes an especially serious threat to electoral integrity due to the
potential for threats and acts of violence to deter voters, candidates, and other stakeholders
from participating in the process.
The last decade has witnessed a surge in scholarly interest in electoral violence, drawing
on a range of literatures related to democratization and elections, ethnic and political
conflict, civil war, and post-conflict elections, among others. This research has examined
a wide range of issues, including causal factors for electoral violence operating not only at
the micro individual and political levels but also at the macro institutional and structural
levels (Goldsmith 2015; Fjelde and Höglund 2016; Taylor, Pevehouse, and Straus 2017).
Research has assessed electoral violence as a strategic choice from a menu of election
manipulation options (Norris, Frank, and Martinez i Coma 2015; Van Ham and Lindberg
2015), examined the interaction effects from the presence of election observers (Daxecker
2012, 2014; Smidt 2016), and the increased risks of electoral violence associated with
holding post-conflict elections (Brancati and Snyder 2013).
Although there is no single widely agreed upon definition of electoral violence,
Fischer’s (2001) definition has been widely employed and is summarized as any act or
threat of action, that involves physical harm or psychological intimidation, with the
intention of delaying or influencing the electoral process or outcomes. Incidents that
involve actual physical harm (including sexual violence) are of particular concern
because of the potential for large scale mortality and morbidity among the civilian popu-
lation (Smith 2009; Dercon and Gutiérrez-Romero 2012; Goldsmith 2015), but threats of
violence, or other acts such as psychological intimidation, are much more common.
Consequently, the concept of electoral violence is understood by most scholars as
encompassing a range of other non-physical types of harm including threats of physical
assault, as well as psychological intimidation and harassment, and economic damage or
loss (Höglund 2009, 417; Bardall 2011, 6–8, 22). These non-physical forms of violence
are nonetheless quite serious. They can take the form of thinly veiled threats to
destroy property, harm children or other family members, or humiliate or shame
someone in front of the community, and can be as effective as actual physical violence
in deterring someone from participating in the political process4 (Höglund 2009, 417;
Bardall 2011, 18).
Birch and Muchlinski (2017) offer another definition of electoral violence in their work,
worth quoting at length, as it explicitly subsumes electoral violence under the rubric of
political violence, and connects the temporal aspect of the election process to the causal
link that assumes acts of electoral violence are motivated by political goals to manipulate
or control the outcomes of the electoral process:
4 P. SCHNEIDER AND D. CARROLL

… our definition of electoral violence is: coercive force, directed towards electoral actors and/
or objects, that occurs in the context of electoral competition. This definition can be justified
on the grounds that virtually all political violence that occurs during the electoral period can
be expected to be conditioned by the electoral process either directly or indirectly, and con-
versely, the electoral process can be expected to be conditioned by virtually all political vio-
lence that occurs during this period (3).

The reference to coercive force is an important one, because it implies intentionality which
is one of the necessary attributes that distinguishes violence from more general acts that
result in harm which may occur without a motive or intention.
The importance of intentionality in definitions of violence is also found in the World
Health Organization’s (WHO) approach that defines violence as
the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another
person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of
resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.
(Rutherford et al. 2007, 676)

The WHO definition adds the notion of deprivation which is less commonly included in
analyses of forms of electoral violence. We believe that the notion of deprivation aptly
describes the effects or consequences of a well-established category of electoral violence
– economic violence – and is a useful addition in specifying a particular form of economic
violence. For example, typical examples of economic violence such as destruction of prop-
erty require the active use of physical force to destroy something. In contrast, depriving an
individual of shelter, or family or entire village of access to a market to purchase food in
retaliation for refusal to support a particular candidate, for example, constitutes loss and
harm in a way that does not directly require the use of any physical force. Scholars of inti-
mate partner violence have long understood that deprivation is a crucial tactic in the
repertoire of harms that may occur more frequently in the context of interpersonal vio-
lence and family relationships – contexts in which women are disproportionately rep-
resented as targets (but may also serve as perpetrators).
In sum, we offer the following gender sensitive definition of electoral violence that
covers a range of types of targets, perpetrators, and forms of violence, as well as timing
and motive:
Electoral violence constitutes any purposeful or calculated act of physical, sexual, psychologi-
cal or economic harm against a person or property, including threats, harassment, intimida-
tion, or deprivation that occurs at any point throughout the election cycle with the intent to
discourage or prevent an individual or group from participating, or to alter an election
process or outcome.

Gender and electoral violence

Electoral violence is perpetrated by individuals or groups who seek to manipulate or
control the electoral process or election outcomes, and this often results in actions
intended to dissuade or prevent citizens from participating in the political process. Con-
ventional political science scholarship on electoral violence typically ignores its gendered
dimensions such that acts of violence, intimidation, or harassment motivated by gender
discrimination are often not included as instances of electoral violence (Dercon and
Gutiérrez-Romero 2012; Daxecker 2014; Goldsmith 2015; Van Ham and Lindberg
 POLICY STUDIES 5

2015; Birch and Muchlinski 2017; Taylor, Pevehouse, and Straus 2017). This is proble-
matic, as over the last decade scholars and practitioners have documented that women
experience a wide range of harms during elections both in private and public spaces
because they are women, with the intent to discourage their participation as voters, candi-
dates, elected officials, party leaders, activists, and supporters or agents of candidates
(National Democratic Institute 2018; Report of the Special Rapporteur 2018, 9–10). Fur-
thermore, scholars have documented cases in which women are perpetrators of political
violence, complicating our notions of the relationship between gender and violence,
women’s positionality, and culpability (Lorentzen and Turpin 1998; Moser and Clark
2001; Bardall 2011; Mackenzie 2012; Sjoberg 2016).
Scholars and practitioners have documented serious incidents of violence against
women during elections (VAWE) at least as far back as 2010 (SAP 2008; Kellow
2010; Valverde 2011; RUA 2010; Bardall 2011, 2013, 2016; Valverde 2011; Cerna
2014; Drummond 2015; Piscopo 2015, 2016; Ballington 2016; Bjarnegard 2016; Krook
and Sanin 2016a, 2016b; Krook 2017). Bardall’s (2011) report, Breaking the Mold:
Understanding Gender and Electoral Violence was the first comprehensive examination
of the relationship between gender and election violence, and from this work the
acronym VAWE gained traction. Utilizing International Foundation for Electoral Assist-
ance (IFES) data from six country contexts, Bardall examined in detail the forms and
frequencies of electoral violence by gender of the target5 and the perpetrator. Data
from Bardall (2011) and others clearly demonstrate gendered patterns of perpetration
and victimization (Figures 4–7, 10–14; UN Women Programming Guide 2017, 31–35;
Report of the Special Rapporteur 2018, 9–10). While women are frequently the
targets of gendered electoral violence, and males frequently the perpetrators, there are
exceptions to this pattern. Bardall (2011) finds (albeit limited) evidence that under
some conditions, women can perpetrate violence often against other females, and
especially when they are part of group violence (1–2).
As many scholars have already noted, intentions are hard to measure, and the targets of
violence may perceive the motivation behind the attack in a way quite different from the
perpetrator(s) (Krook and Sanin 2016a, 147; Piscopo 2016, 446). To untangle the complex
interplay between intent and action, and determine whether an attack was motivated by
political power struggles on the one hand, or embedded in gendered power relations,
on the other, requires a considerable amount of detail about the incident. Motivations
are obviously more difficult to validate empirically than say, reporting the location of
an incident. Some degree of error in the data is likely unavoidable. Minimizing error in
assigning motives to acts of violence requires a methodological approach that includes
careful questioning and follow up with the respondent, and gathering data at a level of
detail rarely found in existing electoral violence studies.
Birch and Muchlinski (2017) point out the weaknesses of existing methodologies by
stating,
many broad measures of electoral violence currently in use obscure the identity of the actors
involved, gloss over the tactics employed, do not report on the nature of the violence itself, or
otherwise provide indicators of electoral violence at quite high levels of aggregation and gen-
erality. Because of this lack of detailed data, important puzzles still remain about the perpe-
trators, timing, causes, consequences, and nature of electoral violence. (2)
6 P. SCHNEIDER AND D. CARROLL

Fjelde and Höglund (2016, 9) and Norris, Frank, and Martinez i Coma (2015, 146–147)
make similar arguments in their analyses of methodological challenges in the measure-
ment of electoral violence, and in their recommendations for future research.
The alternative and gender sensitive conceptual framework that we propose below pro-
motes the collection of data on individual and group perpetrated violence at levels of
specificity necessary to expose the complex relationship between gender and electoral vio-
lence. At the same time, it retains the flexibility and logical properties necessary to cover
cases in which a weak relationship between gender and election violence exists. To demon-
strate how a gender sensitive framework improves our understanding of the nature and
extent of violence during elections, in the analysis below we provide examples of cases
of various types of gendered and non-gendered violence.

Methods
To elucidate how a gender sensitive conceptual framework contributes to our understand-
ing of the motives, types, and forms of election violence, we draw examples from two main
sources. The first source comprises reports and assessments by professional practitioners
in the fields of democratic participation, and international election observation. Prac-
titioner-scholars like Bardall (2011) observed and studied VAWE at the community
level, and were the first individuals to call attention through their work to the various
forms of violence and harassment experienced by women political stakeholders during
the election process.
The second source of data is from one of the authors’ (Schneider) ethnographic field
research in Uganda conducted during July and August of 2018, and March of 2019. As
mentioned above, the literature on election violence is dominated by studies that draw
upon large N databases that have broad geographic coverage, but which lack the level
of detail necessary to document first hand, important manifestations of violence. These
include the gender of perpetrator or target, certain temporal qualities such as if violence
is perpetrated over a sustained period of time, or the perceived motivations behind the vio-
lence. Ethnographic methods can overcome some of the limitations of large N studies by
facilitating collection of detailed qualitative data.
Schneider, with the assistance of Ugandan human rights defender Lina Zedriga Waru,
conducted sixteen focus group discussions with one hundred and sixteen participants, and
fourteen key informant interviews. Focus group participants comprised men and women
who were politically active at some level in local councilor (LC1-V) elections serving in
one or more of the following roles: candidates, campaign managers, party officials, candi-
date mobilizers or “agents,” current and former elected officials, or voters. Key informants
included staff at women’s rights organizations, a media representative (radio talk show
host), and current and former elected officials and party leaders. Participants were ident-
ified through convenience and snowball sampling techniques and sampled from five elec-
toral districts representing a diverse group of counties, sub-counties, and villages in
northeastern (Moroto), northern (Gulu), central (Soroti), and southcentral (Wakiso;
Mityana) regions of the country. Ugandan graduate assistants provided language trans-
lation for speakers of Karamojong (Moroto), Acholi/Lango (Gulu), Teso (Soroti), and
Luganda (Wakiso; Mityana).
 POLICY STUDIES 7

In addition to these qualitative sources, 134 respondents completed detailed election

incident reports indicating whether or not they had experienced any election related vio-
lence, threats, intimidation, or harassment during the 2016 or 2018 election cycles (includ-
ing during voter education, candidate certification or nomination, voter registration
efforts, the primary election, election day, or during the immediate post-election
period). For those who reported election related incidents, detailed information was gath-
ered about the type, timing, location, target, perpetrator and other characteristics relevant
to understanding the incident.

A gender sensitive conceptual framework for the study of electoral

violence
The varied and complex ways in which sex and gender condition social interactions within
any given society, presents significant methodological challenges for scholars who seek to
empirically document sex- differentiated and gendered political behaviour. The frame-
work that we propose addresses some of these challenges by defining key concepts and
clarifying logical relationships between concepts and assumptions in the study of
gender and electoral violence.
Violence against women in politics (VAWP) or elections (VAWE) is generally under-
stood to be a category or sub-type of gender-based violence because the motivation for the
behaviour is assumed to be embedded in unequal gendered power relations and gender
discrimination. It is also a sub-type of violence against women (VAW) as women are
assumed to be the primary targets. Gender-based violence is violence that is perpetrated
against an individual for transgressing dominant gender roles, norms, or expectations
of behaviour in a given society (Bloom 2008, 14) which means that heterosexual/cis-gen-
dered, homosexual, transgender men, and non-binary individuals may be targets. Under
this definition of gender-based violence, even male supporters of women’s rights may be
targeted if their views transgress dominant gender norms in their communities.
For our purposes, the concept gendered violence is defined as violence in which the
gender of the perpetrator(s) or target(s) emerge in the data as a predictor of types or pat-
terns of violence. The motivation behind the violence can involve a range of different
instrumental concerns, including gender discrimination or sexism. Or, the motivation
could be the result of political or partisan attempts to control the outcome of an election
or resources, or something else altogether such as animus directed at religious or ethnic
minorities.
Theories of gendered political behaviour, such as the previously discussed notion of a
male preserve, predict that males will be overrepresented in public and political spaces
because these spaces remain male dominated and controlled, especially in many lower
income countries. Other theories of gendered behaviour predict that males will be at
higher risk of committing violence in groups, than when acting alone (Reeves Sanday
1990; Lombard 2017). Group or gang violence in which males are disproportionately rep-
resented are considered cases of gendered violence for purposes of this research, because if
gender did not matter we would expect to find a relatively random distribution of males
and females participating in group violence.
Both of these theories predict a form of electoral violence documented in our field
research in Uganda. Respondents reported a large number of instances of male (or
8 P. SCHNEIDER AND D. CARROLL

predominantly male) youth gangs paid as party agents to threaten supporters of an oppo-
sition candidate.6 When asked who was perpetrating violence during elections, one female
councilor responded that in her community, “the agents of candidates are perpetrating the
violence. Mostly males. Mostly youth and drunk” (focus group discussion, women coun-
cilors, LCIII, Gulu, August 2 2018). A male agent of a candidate in Soroti remarked, “I was
surrounded at my candidate’s rally by the opposition and they started throwing rocks at
us. These are men – youth – who were the perpetrators” (focus group discussion, Soroti,
July 26 2018). A community radio host who interviews candidates on the air during elec-
tions remarked, “Agents are mostly the perpetrators. An agent wants to show that they are
working for their candidate so they actually go out and start trouble with the other side.
Mostly men are agents and perpetrators of this kind of sabotage” (key informant interview,
community radio host, Gulu, July 31 2018). There were some instances in which women
(often very low-income women) were paid agents involved in gang violence. However,
men and boys were more often perceived to be the main perpetrators of this form of
violence.
Another example that reflects gendered patterns of violence is the case in which male
party members propositioned female candidates or elected officials within the same party.
This type of harassment was reported as pervasive among key informants and focus group
participants in Uganda, and is also documented by the Ugandan women’s human rights
group Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) in a recent publication (FOWEDE
2018, 39). Here, the gender of both the target and the perpetrator emerge as important in
the pattern of violence. The motivation for sexually harassing female candidates is clearly
grounded in gendered power relations and is a form of sex discrimination. We argue that it
is also a form of gendered election violence that can result in psychological and emotional
harm, and deter women from participating in elections, and in the political process more
broadly.
Female candidates and elected officials in Uganda reported widespread sexual harass-
ment, unwanted sexual contact, and expectations of sexual favours in exchange for votes
(from community members) or party support (male fellow party members). One infor-
mant who had served two terms in an LCIII women’s seat stated that transactional sex
was a fact of life for female candidates who lacked money to run a campaign. She said,
“To run, to get party support, you must end up giving in and agreeing” (focus group dis-
cussion, women councilors, Soroti, July 27 2018). Another female candidate in the same
group stated, “It is pervasive that women candidates are expected to sleep with party
leaders. That is why some husbands do not want their wives to be candidates because
they assume that they will have to sleep with the men” (focus group discussion, women
councilors, Soroti, July 27 2018).

Gender and electoral violence, the conventional approach

As mentioned above, violence against women in elections motivated by gender discrimi-
nation or misogyny is generally understood to be a subset of both violence against women
in politics, and violence against women more generally. However, it has not been included
as a category of electoral violence in the political violence scholarship. Figure 1 is a visual
representation of what we argue is the conventional approach in the political violence lit-
erature to the study of the relationship between gender and electoral violence. Why is this?
 POLICY STUDIES 9

Figure 1. Conventional approach to the relationship between violence against women in elections
(VAWE) and political/electoral violence.

There are feminist scholars writing on political violence, who study its gendered
forms and types, however their work tends to be outside of the field of electoral
studies (Moser and Clark 2001; Mazurana, Raven-Roberts, and Parpart 2005; Cheldelin
and Eliatamby 2011; Cohn 2012; Guichaoua 2012; Sjoberg 2016; Davis 2017). When
gender is included in electoral studies the research tends to focus on questions of
women’s political behaviour as voters and candidates, such as studies that examine
the impact of electoral quotas on women’s political representation (Dahlerup and Frei-
denvall 2005; Krook 2009; Paxton, Hughes, and Painter 2010). The work of scholars
such as Bardall (2011) and Krook ( 2017) who have documented violence and harass-
ment against women politicians in national legislatures, rightly situate their scholarship
at the intersection of feminist studies of women and politics, and political violence.
However, the conventional political/electoral violence scholarship has generally failed
to include violence and harms motivated by gender discrimination against women can-
didates and elected officials as acts of political violence.
To better understand how the conventional approach to the study of political violence
may overlook important gendered aspects of electoral violence, we can consider the case of
female Afghan politician Sitara Achakzai, a women’s rights activist and local
councilor who was assassinated in 2009 by an extremist group. (Boone 2009). Violence
studies scholars might record her death as an instance of political violence, but fail to con-
sider it an instance of gender-based violence motivated by misogyny or sex discrimination,
neglecting a crucial aspect of the case. The assassination of Achakzai resulted in a tremen-
dous loss, and not only to her family. It likely had a chilling effect on the political ambi-
tions of untold other women in the region. Indeed, both our findings from Uganda, and
evidence from a large Interparliamentary Union (IPU) (2016) study suggests that for every
instance of actual harm, there are many more cases in which women candidates or elected
officials are threatened with physical harm because they are women. As mentioned pre-
viously, threats of harm are serious forms of intimidation and harassment that, depending
upon the severity of the threat, can be experienced as psychological terror by those who are
targeted. Acts of violence against politically active women constitute not only harm to a
10 P. SCHNEIDER AND D. CARROLL

single individual, but also by extension, to an entire class of citizens whose participation is
essential to upholding fundamental democratic principles (Krook 2017).

An alternative approach to conceptualizing gender and electoral violence

In an effort to strengthen the explanatory power of the conventional approach we offer an
alternate framework (Figure 2) that conceptualizes violence against women in elections
and politics as a logical subset of the political violence set. This alternative approach
strengthens the existing framework in at least two important ways. From a methodological
perspective, it encourages the inclusion of a wider range of independent variables, such as
gender, that facilitates a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of the causes and
consequences of the violence. Secondly, it eliminates the artificial segregation of studies of
violence against women in politics/elections as women, from the political and electoral vio-
lence sets. By including additional motivations for electoral violence, such as gender dis-
crimination and misogyny, we expand the range of violent acts included in the study of
political violence, including those for which women may be at greater risk of victimization.
This speaks to longstanding feminist critiques of the marginalization of violence against
women in political violence literature, and challenges assumptions that violence against
women as women is outside of the scope of legitimate political violence.
Of course, not all incidents or patterns of violence correlate with gender, and when
gender fails to predict or explain any significant level of variation in the data we categorize
this as non-gendered electoral violence. In such instances, the motive of the violence would
be purely political in nature, rather than a function of gendered power relations. An
example of non-gendered electoral violence from our field work is a case where a man
stood as an independent candidate in a local council race in a district that is a stronghold
of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party. He received threats of physical
harm from family and community members, who feared losing payments from the party if
the village failed to show unified support for the NRM. While all of the participants in this

Figure 2. Alternative approach to the relationship between violence against women in elections
(VAWE) and political/electoral violence.
 POLICY STUDIES 11

incident have a sex/gender, there is nothing in the details of the incident to suggest that
sex/gender was a particularly important factor in understanding or explaining the
nature of the violence.
Lastly, Figure 3 supplements the conceptual framework in Figure 2, by illustrating in
more detail the gendered dimensions of the electoral environment. The flow chart
posits that the motivation for electoral violence can predict or explain some of the vari-
ation in patterns of targeting, perpetration, type of violence, and even the location of vio-
lence. For instance, reading from left to right, the first motivation listed for electoral
violence is that of gender discrimination or misogyny. The violence is motivated by an

Figure 3. Gendered dimensions of electoral violence.

12 P. SCHNEIDER AND D. CARROLL

attempt to prohibit or dissuade individuals from participating in the election process based
upon sex/gender. This motive predicts that women are more frequently the primary
targets of violence, and men, the primary perpetrators. An example of this target-perpe-
trator combination was discussed above in the stories of women candidates who were
targets of sexual harassment, coercion, and unwanted sexual contact from male
candidates and party leaders.
Another category of incidents in which women are the primary targets and men the
primary perpetrators are those involving intimate partners who seek to control the politi-
cal choices, or behaviour of spouses. This type of electoral violence is unique in that it
occurs primarily in the home, or private sphere, and thus it is unlikely to be documented
in conventional studies of electoral violence. A number of respondents in Uganda shared
stories of women who experienced serious physical injury from male partners over elec-
tion related disputes. For instance, two market women who were agents for a female can-
didate in their subcounty in Soroti stated, “The husbands control the time that a woman
can go to the polls,” and, “If your candidate wins, and your husband’s loses, then you
cannot rejoice or you will get beaten” (focus group discussion, market women’s associ-
ation, Soroti, July 26 2018). In Gulu, the female director of a field office for a national
women’s rights organization stated,
Women also face challenges to choose their own candidate—especially if they are illiterate.
Two women from a village came to my office just recently wanting advice about how to
deal with their husbands! The lining up behind [method of voting as an alternative to the
use of secret ballot] meant that some women got beat up when they lined up behind the can-
didate they wanted, rather than their husbands. We know that this happened for a fact! (key
informant interview, director of women’s rights organization, Gulu, July 31 2018).

While less common, it is certainly possible for women to perpetrate election related vio-
lence against other women, motivated by gender discrimination. Although we have no
examples of this type from our field work in Uganda, there are a number of violent cultural
practices globally in which female relatives perpetrate violence against other females to
defend traditional gender roles, privilege, and gender hierarchies (Engle Merry 2009,
127). Violence motivated by gender discrimination and unequal gendered power relations
could also target males who are perceived as male allies of women’s rights, as gender non-
conforming, or sexual minorities. In this case, males or females could be perpetrators of
violence (Weiss and Bosia 2013).
Gender and sexual minorities are at greater risk than others of being targets of violence,
and this is an understudied form of gendered violence. Weiss and Bosia (2013) demon-
strate in their groundbreaking work on global homophobia that lesbians, gay men, bisex-
uals, and transgender (LGBT) individuals are most often targeted as gender and sexual
minorities rather than for explicitly political or partisan reasons. Recent events in a
range of countries (e.g. Iran, Russia, Poland, Uganda, Cameroon) complicate the interpret-
ation of the motivation behind the targeting of LGBT individuals, suggesting that sexual
minorities may be used as scapegoats during political campaigns to deflect attention away
from creeping authoritarianism. Our proposed framework attempts to account for some of
the more common forms of political violence against LGBTQ individuals, as gendered
electoral violence. This framework can also account for possible interaction effects
between gender and other marginalized social identities such as age, ability, ethnic
 POLICY STUDIES 13

minority status, or others which may operate to place some individuals at higher risk of
violence.
The second motivation for gendered electoral violence comprises political or partisan
interests to control or affect the electoral process, or election outcome. We argue that vio-
lence motivated by political factors is gendered if gender has some explanatory power in
predicting or explaining patterns of targeting, perpetration, or forms of violence. A
number of examples from the Uganda case support this assertion. The first is the case
of a female candidate targeting another female candidate in a race for a women’s reserved
seat in the local council election. In our field research in northern Uganda, we found
extensive evidence of female perpetrated violence against other female candidates, or
their agents/supporters. Female perpetrated violence was much more common in local
municipal council (LC) contests for a “woman’s (quota/reserved) seat” than in contests
where women competed against men for a direct or open seat.
One female respondent who was an agent for a female candidate admitted that she would
intentionally start physical altercations to prove to her candidate that she was a good agent,
so she could get money to feed her children (focus group discussion, mixed, Soroti, July 26
2018). A female candidate for the woman’s disabled seat recounted how two women agents
of her female opponent followed her home after a campaign event, beat her, and cut her face,
pointing to a prominent scar (incident report, case 13, female respondent, Gulu). Another
respondent who was an agent for an LC1 female candidate reported that she and other sup-
porters were chased by a group of ten male and female youth supporters of a different female
candidate. One woman in their group fell behind and was physically attacked and had her
arm broken (incident report, case 25, female respondent, Soroti). Unlike instances of vio-
lence against women in elections that is motivated by sexism or gender discrimination,
the motivation behind violence perpetrated by female candidates or their agents, against
other female candidates or agents was clearly political or partisan in nature.
Gender is important factor in cases of female perpetrated violence against other females
for at least two reasons. First, female perpetrated violence is still considered an anomaly in
some contexts, and electoral violence is one of them. Uncovering and explaining patterns
of female perpetration are important from both an empirical and a theoretical perspective.
Secondly, the violence occurred within the context of an election for a woman’s reserved
(quota) seat. This has implications for our understanding of how institutional reforms
affect women’s political participation and representation, and whether certain institutional
reforms might predict higher levels of (gendered) election violence.
As mentioned previously, we also found many instances in which all male youth gangs
carried out sustained threats, harassment and intimidation against opposition candidates
or their supporters. This pattern of perpetration (youth gangs) has been documented in
accounts of election violence, but the gender of the perpetrators is rarely if ever men-
tioned, nor examined or interrogated as an important characteristic for understanding
the nature of the violence (Bekoe 2012, 222; Burchard 2015, 28).7 We found a number
of incidents in Uganda in which targets reported that perpetrators were mixed male
and female groups or gangs, or even all female groups of supporters of female candidates.
Using a gendered lens can complicate both our expectations about perpetrators of electoral
violence, and our assumptions of why the violence occurs.
In sum, our alternative conceptual framework offers a gender sensitive approach to the
study of violence that clarifies why gender matters in the study of electoral violence. It
14 P. SCHNEIDER AND D. CARROLL

demonstrates how analysing elections with a gendered lens exposes types and patterns of
violence that might otherwise be missed, and thus increases the explanatory power of
models that seek to document and understand electoral violence. A conceptual framework
that more accurately captures and documents the range of harms experienced by individ-
uals in contentious elections brings us closer to the goals of understanding how to ensure
safer and more inclusive elections for all.

Conclusion
In this article we have proposed and defended a gender sensitive conceptual framework
that clarifies and refines the complex relationship between gender and election violence.
The framework illuminates how gendered election violence may be motivated by political
or factional concerns, or by sex discrimination. When motivated by sex discrimination,
violence may circumscribe or limit women’s political participation and threaten the integ-
rity of democratic elections. Violence against women in elections is a global problem deser-
ving of greater attention from scholars and practitioners. The types of violence motivated
by gender discrimination and which target female voters, candidates, and other actors can
be serious, and even fatal, making its exclusion from the electoral violence literature
especially problematic. Furthermore, gendered election violence can have real and
serious consequences not only for individual women, but also for women as a
group who can be dissuaded from participating in politics out of fear of retribution or
retaliation. These incidents of violence usually entail violations to one or more of a wide
range of human rights and state obligations for democratic elections, including the right
to participate in political affairs, to vote and be elected, equality between men and
women, freedom from discrimination, the right to the security of the person, among others.
The failure to consider sex/gender as a variable in research on electoral violence can lead
to important gaps in our understanding of patterns of perpetration, victimization and harm.
Such patterns include widely observed instances of all male groups perpetrating violence,
but also cases in which females perpetrate violence against other females during campaign-
ing or elections. These gaps must be addressed in order to develop more effective policies
aimed at mitigating electoral violence, and securing safer, and more inclusive elections.
Such policies could include legislation or electoral regulations to address violence against
women in elections, and other types of gendered election violence such as attacks on
sexual minorities; creation of appropriate enforcement entities; sanctions for non-compli-
ance as well as avenues for administrative or judicial remedies; the adoption of codes of
conduct by political parties and other election stakeholders; public awareness campaigns
about VAWE ; and over the long-term, efforts to further strengthen the international nor-
mative framework related to VAWE and other forms of gendered election violence.

Notes
1. https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Women/ViolenceAgainstWomeninPoliticsReport.
pdf
2. As far as we can determine, the use of the concept of a male preserve was first introduced in
the academic scholarship devoted to the study of sport and gendered power relations and is
attributed to Sheard and Dunning. Christopher R. Matthews resurrects the term in his
insightful 2016 article in the journal Gender & Society.
 POLICY STUDIES 15

3. In the interest of coalescing around a single set of acronyms, we use the acronyms for vio-
lence against women in politics (VAWP) and violence against women in elections
(VAWE), or in some cases VAWP/E, that is utilized by UN Women in the recent compre-
hensive programming guide, Preventing Violence against Women in Elections, that can be
found here, http://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/
publications/2017/preventingvaw-in-elections.pdf?la=en&vs=2640
4. In recent field work in northern Uganda, one of the authors (Schneider) heard compelling
stories from informants about the effectiveness of the use of threats. Acts of violence,
while they did occur, were not necessary to undermine the sense of safety of voters and can-
didates and dissuade individuals from participating in the electoral process.
5. Following Höglund (2009 , 417) and others in the field of election and conflict studies, we
employ the term target to denote victims of violence. While the term survivor has been
widely adopted in the public health literature--particularly for victims of intimate partner
violence and especially sexual assault, we argue that target is a generic and more appropriate
concept to describe victims of the wide range electoral violence documented in the present
study.
6. In Uganda we found that out of 90 acts of election violence reported by informants in Soroti,
Moroto and Gulu, 44 were instances of group perpetrated violence. Of these, four groups are
all female, nineteen are all male, and twenty- one are mixed, with “mostly male” but some
female members.
7. In fact, there is no mention of gender or women in the index of either of these volumes.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Gabrielle Bardall, Toby James, Holly Ann Garnett, and the anonymous
reviewers at Policy Studies for their many helpful comments on earlier versions of this work. We
also benefitted greatly from the insights shared by participants at the 2018 Uppsala University
workshop on Gender, Politics and Violence, and the 2018 workshop, Measuring Violence against
Women in Elections, hosted by the Institute for Developing Nations (IDN) at Emory University,
and The Carter Center. We also owe a debt of gratitude to colleagues who participated in the Euro-
pean Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) workshop, Violence Against Political Actors: New
Research Directions, especially organizers Elin Bjarnegård and Mona Lena Krook, and discussant
Pär Zetterberg. Research assistant Sophie Clark cheerfully and efficiently addressed our every
request. Finally, ethnographic data that informs this study was made possible because of the assist-
ance of Ugandan human rights defender and magistrate Lina Zedriga Waru whose expansive pro-
fessional network greatly facilitated the data collection effort during Schneider’s field work in
Uganda.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Fieldwork data
Focus group discussion, women councilors LCIII, Gulu, Uganda, 2 August 2018.
Focus group discussion, mixed candidates, agents, and voters, Soroti, Uganda, 26 July
2018.
Focus group discussion, market women’s association, Soroti, Uganda, 26 July 2018.
Focus group discussion, women councilors LC mixed, Soroti, Uganda, 27 July 2018.
Key informant interview, community radio host, Gulu, Uganda, 31 July 2018.
Key informant interview, director of women’s rights organization, Gulu, Uganda, 31 July
2018.
16 P. SCHNEIDER AND D. CARROLL

Incident report, case 13, female respondent, Gulu Uganda.

Incident report, case 25, female respondent, Soroti, Uganda.

Notes on contributor
Paige Schneider is Assistant Professor of Politics, and Women’s and Gender Studies at the Univer-
sity of the South (Sewanee).
David Carroll is Director of the Democracy Program at the The Carter Center, with international
election observation and monitoring projects as part of his portfolio.

ORCID
Paige Schneider http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7540-5027

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