Awards

Our awards honor outstanding contributions to feminist psychology and social justice, recognizing individuals who champion inclusion, research excellence, and advocacy. Each award celebrates achievements that push boundaries, elevate underrepresented voices, and foster understanding of gender, sexuality, and cultural issues. We proudly recognize those who inspire progress and exemplify commitment to advancing equality and mental health.

If you have questions about a specific award, please reach out to the current Implementation Collective Staffer.

  • Books or articles published in the current calendar year may be eligible for a Distinguished Publication Award to be conferred in August of the year following publication. Awards are given to published work that makes significant and substantial contributions to research and theory that advances our understanding of the psychology of women and/or gender, and promotes the goals of the Association for Women in Psychology. Announcement of the award is made at the annual meetings of the American Psychological Association.

    Any AWP member can nominate publications for the DPA; self-nominations are welcome. On occasion, the DPA committee also honors feminist psychologists with the Distinguished Career Award.

    Deadline: May 15th

    Submissions or Questions: Ella Ben Hagai, ebenhagai@fullerton.edu

  • Eligibility and Nominations:

    Award given every few years by the Distinguished Publication Award (DPA) committee to honor a former DPA winner. The Distinguished Career award is based on a career of books and articles that make a significant, substantial, and sustaining contribution to research and theory advancing our understanding of the psychology of women and promote the goals of the Association for Women in Psychology.

    Deadline: February 1

    Submissions or Questions: Ella Ben Hagai, ebenhagai@fullerton.edu

  • Eligibility and Nominations:

    The Association for Women in Psychology honors those who have mentored others in the name of our generous and kind foremother Florence Denmark. AWP presents this award to a feminist leader who continues in Florence's footsteps by providing mentorship and inspiration to others.

    The recipient will be a mentor who continuously provides feminist support, supervision and guidance to undergraduate or graduate students in psychology. The award will be announced during the AWP yearly conference.

    Deadline: February 1st

    Submissions or Questions:
    Kat Quina (kquina@me.com) and Mala Matacin (matacin@hartford.edu)

  • The award was established through a generous founding contribution from Oliva Espín, a long time AWP member and feminist scholar. The award recognizes the work of feminists who are making important contributions to practice, education and training, and/or scholarship in the areas of (a) Gender and Immigration and (b) Ethnicity, Religion, and Sexual Orientation.

    Oliva’s life long contributions to each of these areas of feminist practice and scholarship have been significant. AWP is pleased to partner with Oliva to recognize and support ongoing work in these important areas.

    Nominations and submissions may be made on the basis of noteworthy contributions to (a) practice, (b) education and training, and/or (c) scholarship (presented, published, or unpublished in APA-style publication-ready format) in one of the following two areas: Gender and Immigration or the intersection of Ethnicity, Religion, and Sexual Orientation.

    Deadline: December 31

    Submissions: Direct materials and questions to Kayla Weiner, at kmweinerphd@gmail.com.

  • Eligibility: Manuscripts (conference papers, dissertations, journal articles, or other manuscripts) can be unpublished, under review, accepted for publication or published. (Note: If you are submitting a published manuscript for consideration, please provide full citation) Both sole and jointly authored papers are eligible. Manuscripts of less than 50 pages are preferred, but longer manuscripts are acceptable; however, no books will be considered. Members and nonmembers of the Association for Women in Psychology will be considered equally.  

    Deadline: August 15

    Review: Submissions must be made by manuscript author(s) to Lhyers@wcupa.edu by 11:59pm (Eastern Standard Time) on August 15.

    Please include two word documents in your submission, one document containing the manuscript with no identifying information (including only the title, abstract, and manuscript body) and a second document containing contact information (i.e., author name(s) and contact information along with the title, abstract, and manuscript body). A panel of Association for Women in Psychology committee members will review the anonymous manuscripts. Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of sound methodology, clarity of writing, and relevance to the advancement of the psychology of lesbians.

  • Eligibility and Nominations: This award intends to recognize, further the development of, and honor distinguished scholarship in the field of the psychology of Jewish Women. Theoretical papers, creative projects and research papers will be considered. Papers which have been submitted for publication or presented at a professional meeting are eligible, as well as papers which have been previously published or accepted for publication.

    Deadline: December 31st

    Send Nominations to:  kmweinerphd@gmail.com

  • Eligibility and Nominations:
    We invite empirical, theoretical, and applied papers and book chapters that contribute significantly to the understanding of the psychology of women of color.

    Manuscripts must be by and about women of color; we consider jointly authored manuscripts if the first author is a woman of color. Papers and book chapters should be approximately journal length, written in APA manuscript style, and publication-ready (i.e., no working drafts). We welcome papers and book chapters that are unpublished, previously published, presented at professional conferences, or manuscripts submitted for publication.

    Review: A diverse panel of AWP members will conduct a masked review (except when reviewing published work). Reviewers will consider the following criteria in their reviews: creativity, sound methodology, clarity of presentation, contribution of new knowledge, and importance to advancement of the psychology of women of color.

    We ask that the award recipient must be available to present the manuscript at the upcoming Association for Women in Psychology annual conference. AWP will waive your registration fees to facilitate this.

    Deadline: November 30th 

    Submission Procedures:
    Please send your submissions electronically to the Women of Color Coordinator, Dr. Jameta Nicole Barlow (jnbarlow@gwu.edu)

  • Eligibility and Nomination Process: Christine Blasey-Ford Woman of Courage Award was established to recognize and celebrate feminist leaders who have demonstrated the quality of political courage in standing up and speaking truth to power, in order to take action against injustice, discrimination, or harm. The inaugural award was presented to Christine Blasey-Ford at the 50th Annual Association for Women in Psychology Conference in Newport, RI.  Any individual who has acted on a local or national level is eligible for this award.

    Deadline: December 31st.

    Submissions or Questions:
    Kat Quina - kquina@me.com
    Kayla Weiner - kmweinerphd@gmail.com

  • Established in 2019, this award honors Dr. Susan L. Morrow who changed the landscape of feminist multicultural qualitative research in psychology. The LOVA award committee invites nominations (self-nominations, or nominations for others are welcome) for feminist helping professionals who are also engaged in community organizing, activism, and/or action research. 

    The winner of this award will give an invited presentation as part of a concurrent session at the AWP annual conference.  

    Eligibility and Nomination Process:

  • Eligibility and Nominations:

    Purpose:The Association for Women in Psychology encourages submissions of theoretical and empirical manuscripts that address the psychology gender and sexual minorities, including those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer. Manuscripts focusing on any topic relevant to the psychology of gender and sexual minorities are invited.

    Eligibility: Individual and jointly authored manuscripts are eligible. Manuscripts (conference papers, dissertations, journal articles, or other manuscripts) can be unpublished, under review, accepted for publication or published. (Note: If you are submitting a published manuscript for consideration, please provide full citation). Manuscripts not more than 50 pages are recommended; however, longer manuscripts are also eligible for review. Entire books are not eligible. Members and nonmembers of the Association for Women in Psychology are eligible to apply.  

    Deadline: August 15

    Evaluation: Submissions must be made by manuscript author(s) to Erin Hipple, eehipple@gmail.com by 11:59pm (Central Standard Time) on August 15, 2025. Please include two word documents in your submission, one document containing the manuscript with no identifying information (including only the title, abstract, and manuscript body) and a second document containing contact information (i.e., author name(s) and contact information along with the title, abstract, and manuscript body). A panel of Association for Women in Psychology committee members will review the anonymous manuscripts.

    Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of sound methodology, clarity of writing, and relevance to the advancement of the psychology of gender and sexual minorities.

Awards by the Implementation Collective

Doris Howard Lifetime Service

The Doris Howard Lifetime Service Award was inaugurated in March, 1999, to recognize service to AWP over an extended period of time. It is awarded by the Implementation Collective to recognize persons who have provided exceptional service to AWP over at least a 20-year period in a variety of forms. For instance, the recipient may have served AWP as a member of the Implementation Collective or Conference Committees, coordinator of a caucus or award committee, or as a contributor to special projects of financial initiatives.

Past Recipients 

2020: Nikolai Houston
2019: Kat Quina & Mary Zahm
2018: Sue Morrow & Donna Hawxhurst
2014: Leonore Tiefer
2005: Rachel Josefowitz Siegel
1999: Doris Howard

Christine Ladd-Franklin

The Christine Ladd-Franklin Award is presented annually by the AWP Implementation Collective to a member who has made significant and extensive contributions to the AWP.

The award is named in honor of Christine Ladd-Franklin (1847-1930), an early scientist whose career provided a painful example of the way institutional sexism operated to exclude women from careers in psychology and the sciences. Although Ladd-Franklin completed the work for a Ph.D. in mathematics and logic at Johns Hopkins University in 1882, the university would not confer the degree because she was a woman. Ladd-Franklin continued her experimental work, without the benefits of the terminal degree or official institutional recognition, and made several important contributions to the literature on vision.

In 1926, forty-four years later, Johns Hopkins did award her the Ph.D. for the work she completed in 1882. (Biography based on information from Sheehy, N., Chapman, A. J., & Conroy, W. [Eds.]. [1997]. Biographical dictionary of psychology. NY: Routledge.

Unger-Frieze Prize

All posters accepted for presentation at the annual AWP conference are eligible for the award if a student is the first author. Students, for the sake of this award, are defined as currently enrolled graduate or undergraduate students or individuals within one year of earning their undergraduate degree even if they are not currently enrolled in a graduate program (e.g., a student presenting their honors project).

The co-coordinators of the Researchers’ Caucus work with the conference organizers to identify posters that meet this requirement. Criteria include the overall quality of the research and its relevance to feminist psychology as well as the clarity with which the background, method, results, and conclusions are presented on the poster. Visual presentation will also be evaluated.

Awards Given at APA

Student Research on Women and Gender

The Society for the Psychology of Women (SPW) of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Women in Psychology (AWP) seek research manuscripts for their Annual Student Prize for Psychological Research on Women and Gender.

Research Topics: The student research manuscript should focus from a feminist perspective on women’s lives and issues, or more generally, on gender ideologies and behavior.

Eligibility: Jointly-authored papers are eligible, but the first author must have been a student at the time the research was conducted--as indicated by a statement from the first author, in a cover letter accompanying the submission, specifying when and from what institution the first author obtained the degree, the name of the faculty who supervised the research, and the department of the supervising faculty. Entries should be of journal length and in APA style. Eligible papers include unpublished manuscripts as well as papers that have been submitted or accepted for publication. Published papers are also eligible as long as they have a publication date no older than two years ago. All papers should be submitted in manuscript form, not as pre-prints or prints, with all identifying information removed. Information about authors as well as manuscript possible submission and publication status is to be provided in the cover letter.

Evaluation: Submissions will be judged on feminist theoretical grounding, methodology, clarity, quality of writing, and the social importance of the research questions and findings for a psychology of women and gender. Research papers that address intersectionalities will be given higher consideration.

Awards: A $250.00 prize will be awarded to the best paper. First Prize and Honorable Mention winners will be announced at the meeting of the American Psychological Association. The winners (First Prize and Honorable Mention) of the SPW/AWP Award for Student Psychological Research on Women and Gender receive a one-year free AWP membership. They are also invited to present their prize-winning paper at the AWP Conference.

Deadline: April 8th

Distinguished Publications

Books or articles published in the current calendar year may be eligible for a Distinguished Publication Award to be conferred in August of the year following publication. Awards are given to published work that makes significant and substantial contributions to research and theory that advances our understanding of the psychology of women and/or gender, and promotes the goals of the Association for Women in Psychology. Announcement of the award is made at the annual meetings of the American Psychological Association.

Any AWP member can nominate publications for the DPA; self-nominations are welcome. On occasion, the DPA committee also honors feminist psychologists with the Distinguished Career Award.

Deadline: May 15th

Submissions or Questions: Ella Ben Hagai, ebenhagai@fullerton.edu