2022 UNESCO Prize for Girls’ and Women’s Education
Deadline: May 20, 2022.
Gender equality in education is a basic right and a prerequisite to build inclusive societies. Although notable progress has been made over the last 20 years, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruption to education and exacerbated existing inequalities, disproportionately affecting girls and women.
Today, 127 million girls of primary and secondary school age are out of school, three quarters of children who may never set foot in school are girls while women still accounted for almost two-thirds of all adults unable to read in 2019. (UNESCO Institute for Statistics).
The UNESCO Prize for Girls’ and Women’s Education honours outstanding and innovative contributions made by individuals, institutions, and organizations to advance girls’ and women’s education. It is the first UNESCO Prize of this nature and is unique in showcasing successful projects that improve and promote the educational prospects of girls and women and in turn, the quality of their lives.
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
The nominations will only be considered if the project/programme:
• Has a clear focus on advancing girls’ and women’s education, and the promotion of gender
equality in and through education, and contributes to one or more of the five priority areas of
the Prize:
- Participation: Supporting girls to transition from primary education to lower-secondary
education and to complete full basic education - Literacy: Supporting adolescent girls and young women to acquire literacy skills
- Environment: Supporting the creation of a gender-responsive and safe teaching-learning
environment - Teachers: Engaging teachers to be change agents with gender-responsive teaching attitudes and practices
- Skills: Supporting girls and women to acquire knowledge/skills for life and work
• has already been running for at least two years at the time of nomination (for example a
project nominated in 2022 must have been active since May 2020); and
• shows evidence that it may be replicable, scalable and/or provide significant learning potential
for initiatives in other contexts
AWARD
Funded by the Government of the People’s Republic of China, the Prize is conferred annually to two laureates and consists of an award of US $50,000 each to help further their work in the area of girls’ and women’s education.
