The Martha Farrell Award for Excellence in Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality is a first-of-its-kind initiative to discover, recognise, and honor mid-career individuals and committed institutions which have made valuable contributions in the areas of women’s empowerment, gender equality, and living feminism in their everyday lives and practices.

The Award offers nominees and winners a platform to grow and network with like-minded professionals and institutions working in the space of gender empowerment and equality. Winners also receive a prize money component of INR 1,50,000 each.

Nomination forms

Award Categories

Most Promising Individual

Who can apply:

  • Professionals of any gender, between ages 25 and 40 years, working in government, business, industry, or civil society organisations in India.
  • The person has worked consistently for at least the past five years to promote women’s empowerment or gender equality within the workplace, at home, in communities, in educational institutions, in society, etc.
  • Innovative, practical,and comprehensive  approaches to social change promoting women’s empowerment or gender equality.
  • Personal examples and role models who practice values of feminism in everyday life.

Best Organisation for Gender Equality

Who can apply:

  • Any organisation or department/center/campaign under it, including government, business, industry, educational, health, media, unions, federations, or civil society, registered in India.
  • The organisation has been actively implementing systems/practices/strategies to mainstream gender both externally and internally - not just limited to program implementation but also working towards creating a gender-sensitive and gender-equal environment within their own workplace. Such efforts have been consistent for at least five years.
  • Innovative, practical, and comprehensive approaches to cultural and political change within the organisation toward women’s empowerment or gender equality.
MFA criteria (Hindi)

Most Promising Individual

Seema Gautam

A Dalit social activist from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, she lost her father early in life, and later her mother was murdered in a land dispute. As she struggled to navigate the justice system herself, Seema realised that countless Dalit women faced the same barriers. What began as helping women file complaints, secure compensation, and access government support gradually grew into a larger movement for dignity and rights. Today, through the Ambedkar Patshala Seva Trust, she advances land rights, legal aid, education, and livelihood training.

Best Organisation for Gender Equality

Sarvo Prayas Sansthan (SPS)

Sarvo Prayas emerged from its founder's direct exposure to poverty and gender-based exclusion in rural Madhubani during the early 1990s, where villages lacked roads, electricity, healthcare, and educational access, and women faced acute domestic violence and restricted mobility. A pivotal moment witnessing repeated abuse across three generations of women in a single family shaped the organisation's core insight that gender inequality is inseparable from poverty and child rights violations.

Special Jury - Organisation

Sisterhood Network

Sisterhood Network is a non-profit founded in 2001 by Dr. Alongla Aier, then a professor at a local university in Nagaland, working across 12 villages of Dimapur district with women, children and people from marginalised Naga tribes.

The organisation emerged from grassroots conversations among 12 women in a small classroom, initially triggered by water scarcity and its cascading effects on domestic violence, and has since expanded into livelihoods, education, cultural preservation and survivor support.

Special Jury - Individual

Akash Chohan

When a young woman from his own Banchhada community asked Akash Chouhan to save her daughter from the cycle of caste-based generational sex work, he witnessed firsthand the devastating cost of inaction. After both mother and daughter tragically died, Akash resolved to change the future for girls in his community. Beginning in 2016 with police-led rescue operations, he went on to found Jan Shaurya in 2023, creating pathways beyond exploitation through education, livelihoods, healthcare and leadership.

Find out more about previous winners

2026 Finalists

Individual

Saba Khan

Seema Gautam

Mubshira Khan

Arindam Sumi Das

Akash Chouhan

Organization

Sisterhood Network

Durga India

Sarvo Prayas Sansthan (Sps)

People's Archive Of Rural India (Pari)

People's Action For Development (Pad)

Equal Community Foundation

Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee

Ashadeepa Angavikalara Sarva Abhiwruddhi Seva Samsthe

Jury

Deepa Pawar

Founder-Director of Anubhuti Charitable Trust

Read about them

 

Deepa Pawar

Deepa Pawar, Founder-Director of Anubhuti Charitable Trust, has dedicated her work to advancing gender justice at the intersection of social security, leadership development, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. With over two decades of experience as an individual practitioner, team member, and organisational leader, she brings a strong feminist and anti-caste perspective to her work. In recognition of her impactful contribution, she received the Martha Farrell Award in 2021 in the Most Promising Individual category.

Deep Jyoti Sonu Brahma

Founder Director of Farm2Food Foundation

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Deep Jyoti Sonu Brahma

Deep Jyoti Sonu Brahma is the founder director of Farm2Food Foundation, which focuses on mainstreaming agriculture as an aspirational livelihood for vulnerable youth in Assam. He works in the areas of education, climate change, and coalition building. Brahma is on the advisory governance team at Vartaleap, Catalyst2030 NAISE and several other social enterprises. He has been actively engaging and mentoring women social entrepreneurs and women-led farmer producer companies in the Northeast region.

Mirai Chatterjee

Director of SEWA's Social Security team

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Mirai Chatterjee

Mirai Chatterjee is the director of SEWA's Social Security team and the chairperson of its Cooperative Federation of 110 informal women workers’ cooperatives; she has previously also served as the organisation’s general secretary. Chatterjee is the chairperson of the global informal workers and policymakers network, Women in Informal Employment Globalising and Organising, and is on the board of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. She was a commissioner in the World Health Organization’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health and a member of the High-Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage set up by the Planning Commission of India in 2010.

Dr. Rajesh Tandon

Founder - President of Participatory Research in Asia | Chairperson of MFF

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Dr. Rajesh Tandon

Dr Rajesh Tandon is the founder-president of Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) and the chairperson of Martha Farrell Foundation. He is also the co-chair of UNESCO Chair on Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education since 2012.

A pioneer of participatory research, Tandon has given new meaning to academic research by redefining the relationship between the researcher and the researched. He has also served on numerous expert committees of the Government of India, University Grants Commission, United Nations, Commonwealth and World Bank. In 2015, the Indian Adult Education Association (IAEA) awarded Tandon the Nehru Literacy Award. For his distinguished work on gender issues, the Government of India honoured him with the prestigious Award in Social Justice in 2007.

Sudha Srinivasan

Chief Executive Officer of Centre for Social Innovation

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Sudha Srinivasan

Sudha Srinivasan is the chief executive officer of Centre for Social Innovation, The/Nudge Institute, where she leads initiatives to create a thriving livelihood ecosystem. She currently serves on the Agri-Startup Advisory Group, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India. An engineer by training, she previously worked at Intel and completed her MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow. 

Partners

  • PRIA