Grant Overview
The Gender Equality Grant is designed to help journalists take to a new level the reporting on issues related to gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.
We value stories that elevate the voices of communities not often represented in the media, stories of resilience, and projects that tackle systemic issues of gender equality using data and investigative reporting. For inspiration, here are a few recent projects we supported:
- Women on the Move (The Everyday Projects)
- Immigrant Women at the Front of COVID-19 Resistance in Buenos Aires (Anita Pouchard Serra)
- Fighting Caste, Patriarchy, Climate and the Pandemic One Crop at a Time (Karthikeyan Hemalatha)
- Siona: Amazon’s Defenders Under Threat (Tom Laffay)
- 'No Choice but to Do It': How Women are Criminalized for Surviving (Justine van der Leun)
- Climate Change Pushes Girls in Northern Kenya Back to Early Marriage and Female Genital Mutilation (Neha Wadekar and Will Swanson)
- ‘Buzz of a Mosquito… But With the Sound of Grief’:The Lives of India’s Women Prisoners (Jahnavi Sen)
- Misgendering, Sexual Violence, Harassment: What it is to be a Transgender Person in an Indian Prison (Sukanya Shantha)
To apply, you will be asked to provide the following:
- A description of the proposed project in no more than 250 words.
- A preliminary budget estimate, including a basic breakdown of costs.
- A compelling distribution plan.
Frequently Asked Questions
This opportunity is open to U.S. residents and journalists around the world. We are open to proposals from freelance journalists, staff journalists, or groups of newsrooms working in collaboration with a project idea. We want to make sure that people from many backgrounds and perspectives are empowered to produce journalism. We strongly encourage proposals from journalists and newsrooms who represent a broad array of social, racial, ethnic, underrepresented groups, and economic backgrounds.
When will you be notifying applicants on whether they've been selected?
We begin reviewing applications as soon as they are received and typically notify applicants within a month if they're being considered for support. If there is some urgency to the field reporting, the applicant should state the reason in the application.
What is the budget range for proposals?
We do not have a budget range. We will consider projects of any scope and size and we are open to supporting multiple projects each year. The average size of a Pulitzer Center grant is $5,000, but may be more or less depending on circumstances.
Do you pay stipends or salaries for freelance journalists?
We expect news organizations to pay freelance journalists for their work, though in exceptional cases, we may consider stipends to cover a reporter's time, if provided in the budget with an explanation. It is OK to include costs of contractors, such as data researchers, illustrators, or data visualization/story designers in your proposal and budget. Please do not include stipends for journalists/team members who are in the employ of newsrooms or are being paid by a publisher.