How is political violence gendered? We connect the traditional political violence literature’s emphasis on categorizing attacks to the gender and politics literature’s analysis of the barriers to women’s political participation. Our framework separates gendered political violence into three elements. Gendered motives appear when perpetrators use violence to preserve hegemonic men’s control of politics. Gendered forms emphasize how gender roles and tropes differentially shape men’s and women’s experiences of violence. Gendered impacts capture the subjective meaning-making processes that occur as different audiences react to political violence. This approach offers researchers and policymakers greater analytic precision regarding how political violence is gendered.

Substantial gains have been made worldwide in enhancing women's participation in public life in the past two decades. In 1995, women comprised at least 30 per cent of parliamentarians in only five countries (2 per cent of the total), while today thirty-one states have reached that threshold.1 Constitutional revisions and electoral reform have enfranchised women and facilitated their political participation by entrenching their rights, offering incentives and/or imposing sanctions on political parties and other public bodies to protect against gender-specific threats. Nonetheless, women generally remain acutely under-represented in parliaments (only 21.2 per cent of parliamentarians worldwide are women) and face deep-rooted obstacles to participation as voters and in other civil and public roles. Barriers range from inadequate or nonexistent legal protections, traditional cultural stereotypes and gender roles, lack of access to resources and civic education and generally lower levels of self-confidence in pursuing public office. Of all of these barriers, gender-specific election violence is perhaps the most insidious, affecting and compounding other obstacles.Women's experience of election violence is fundamentally different from that of men (Bardall 2010a). Firstly, women are far more likely to be victims of election violence (defined as ' any harm, or threat of harm, to any persons or property involved in the election process, or the election process itself, during the election period' (Kammerud 2011) than perpetrators (Bardall 2010a). Violence against women in elections (VAWE) refers to any random or conspiratorial act to discourage, suppress, or prevent women from The rising influence of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) has paralleled the rapid development of women's political participation worldwide. For women entering political life or holding public positions, new ICTs are frequently used as tools of genderspecific electoral and political violence. There is evidence of ICTs being used to perpetrate a broad range of violent acts against women during elections, especially acts inflicting fear and psychological harm. Specific characteristics of ICTs are particularly adapted to misuse in this manner. Despite these significant challenges, ICTs also offer groundbreaking solutions for preventing and mitigating violence against women in elections (VAWE). Notably, ICTs combat VAWE through monitoring and documenting violence, via education and awarenessraising platforms and through empowerment and advocacy initiatives.

This article presents a conceptual orientation to the intersection of gender, politics, and violence. The first part of the article will introduce the subject by reviewing the primary conceptual framework and empirical knowledge on the topic to date and discussing the theoretical heritage of the concept. Establishing a key distinction between gender-motivated and gender differentiated violence, this article will discuss the gender dimensions of political violence and the political dimensions of gender-based violence. The latter half of the article reviews a number of the key questions driving research and dialogue in the field in the 21st century.

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