Equality Now, The OpEd Project, and Senior Advisor Ann MacDougall are delighted to partner in launching the 2024 U.S.-based Public Voices Fellowship on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls.
Applications are now closed for the 2024 cohort.
This year-long experience will convene a cohort of twenty thought leaders working for gender equity, with a focus on people with backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented in the mainstream media, and will provide extraordinary support, leadership skills, and knowledge to ensure their ideas shape, not only their fields but the greatest and most urgent conversations of our age.
The OpEd Project is a social venture and leadership organization founded to change who writes history. Its programs elevate the ideas and knowledge of underrepresented expert voices to accelerate solutions to the world’s biggest problems – problems that cannot be solved justly or sustainably without a diversity of voices, expertise, experience, and identity.
The Public Voices Fellowship on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls is now in its third year and is part of The OpEd Project’s Public Voices initiative to change who writes history and Equality Now’s mission to create a just world for all women and girls.
The curriculum explores leadership, power, and action in an unfair world. Fellows will explore how credibility works, how ideas spread, when and why minds change, and how ideas play out over time and space. The goal of this project is to bring new, diverse voices into the national and global conversation because we know that we cannot find just and sustainable solutions without them.
The program includes workshops and one-on-one coaching by leading journalists and editors. All participants must commit to publishing at least two written pieces of thought leadership (and hopefully many more) during their fellowship. Participation in all convenings, continuously and in full, is required – applicants must save the dates and confirm their understanding of this commitment in order for their application to be considered.
What’s it like? Watch a video of one fellowship cohort’s experience.
Selection
We are looking for twenty diverse thought leaders working at the intersection of gender equity and social justice, from across the USA. We seek voices from civil society, academia, and the private sector, including advocates, entrepreneurs, community and business leaders, scientists, educators, and writers, among others.
Fellows will have noteworthy expertise or personal experience in their chosen field and will represent a diversity of specialisms and backgrounds, including age, diasporas, race, sexual orientation, nationalities, and other intersectional identities.
We are keen to amplify a wide range of issues and perspectives – some may already be high up the public agenda and would benefit from a gendered lens, others may be more at the margins or emerging and in need of greater attention. Of particular interest is how the following topics intersect with women’s and girls’ rights:
- Access to justice for victims and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence
- Artificial intelligence
- Child and forced marriage
- Climate change
- Digital rights; digital access; digital safety; digital regulation
- Disability rights within the context of sexual and gender-based violence
- Constitutional equality
- Female genital mutilation
- Gender pay gap
- Indigenous rights
- Non-disclosure agreements
- Online sexual abuse and exploitation; image-based sexual abuse
- Racial justice
- Reproductive rights; economics of sexual reproductive health
- Rollback on women’s rights
- Sex-discriminatory family laws
Fellows will be chosen through a competitive selection process.
Please note: The fellowship is open to individuals 18 years old and above, and who are based in the U.S. Only applicants who can confirm they will attend all four convenings in full and can commit to meeting the fellowship’s writing requirement will be considered.
Fellowship Details
- Cohort of approximately 20 leaders
- Year-long fellowship
- Four discovery-based convenings designed to catalyze knowledge and produce ideas of public value
- Dedicated editors (top journalists) provide regular, one-on-one support/coaching
- Access to weekly journalist office hours and monthly events with media insiders and experts
- A limited number of travel and lodging stipends will be available for those who need them to attend the in-person convening.
Expectation of Fellows
- Commitment to contribute to public discourse
- Commitment to engage with and contribute to the fellowship cohort
- Commitment to participate in all four fellowship convenings in full and without exception
- Commitment to writing a minimum of two opinion (op-ed) pieces (hopefully many more)
- Alignment with and commitment to the spirit and mission of the fellowship
Convening Dates and Times
- Convening 1: September 12 (Thu), 10am – 5pm ET, and 13 (Fri), 9am – 12:30pm ET, in-person in NYC
- Convening 2: November 21 and 22 (Thu, Fri), 12pm – 3:30pm ET, virtual via Zoom
- Convening 3: February 13 and 14 (Thu, Fri), 2025, 12pm – 3:30pm ET, virtual via Zoom
- Convening 4: May 1 and 2 (Thu, Fri), 2025, 12pm – 3:30pm ET, virtual via Zoom
All fellows will also join a 1hr virtual introduction to the Qs work of Equality Now on October 17, 4pm – 5pm ET.
Applications are now closed for the 2024 cohort.
Explore the twenty inspiring individuals who were part of the 2022 fellowship.