The Senegalese Women’s rights activist Awa Fall-Diop is the recipient of the 2026 Anne Klein Women’s Award. For decades, this Pan-African feminist has campaigned for gender equality, often at the expense of her personal freedom. Whether as a teacher, a trade unionist, a co-founder of numerous women’s rights organisations, or as a government minister, Awa Fall-Diop’s feminism has always aimed to help the disadvantaged and build bridges with Africa’s younger generation of feminists.
Jury statement
Awa Fall-Diop’s life mirrors the long journey of Senegal’s women towards freedom and self-determination. Born in 1956, before the country gained independence, she grew up in a working class area of Dakar that was defined by solidarity yet also had deeply rooted patriarchal structures. At an early age she witnessed gender-specific violence when her mother was ostracised as a widow, nevertheless she managed to become the first female head of household in her neighbourhood. From a very young age, Awa Fall-Diop’s life was shaped by growing up among women who took charge of their own lives.
Early on, as a young teacher, she aligned herself with progressive movements and started a petition demanding that women have equal rights with regard to social security, so that women and children would be protected in the same way as male workers and employees. Rapidly, this campaign gained traction all over the country and was also adopted by the trade unions until, in 1993, it resulted in a reform of social security law. This historic achievement was made through the tireless effort of Awa Fall-Diop.
However, soon she realised that in Senegal laws alone will not result in real equality – and so she went one step further. In school books, she had noticed, women were being depicted as cleaners, cooks, mothers, or dancers, while men appeared as headmasters and professionals. She therefore resolved to purge stereotypes from the education system, creating an organisation tasked with developing gender-sensitive curricula and school books, the Observatoire des Relations de Genre au Sénégal (ORGENS). Through countrywide trainings on equal opportunities and gender equality in education she helped teachers to identify, challenge, and reduce discrimination and stereotyping in schools. For this she received the 1996 Ashoka Changemaker Award.
In addition to her commitment for women in Senegal’s education system, Awa Fall-Diop has also become one of the defining voices of West Africa’s feminist movement over the years. She played an important role in designing national strategies towards gender equality and was a key mover in the passing of trailblazing legislation, for example on gender parity in 2010, and on the criminal prosecution of rape and paedophilia in 2020. Her influence goes beyond Senegal: Via national women’s rights networks she helped draft Africa’s historic women’s rights charter, the Maputo Protocol.
Years of struggle towards emancipation and participation did come at a price. When she demanded that President Abdou Diouf resign, she was incarcerated twice, publicly humiliated, and almost lost her civil service job. When the erstwhile leader of the opposition, Abdoulaye Wade, made her a minister in his government, this was a late recognition of her service.
Today, Awa Fall-Diop is regarded as a renowned expert on gender in French-speaking Africa. Without fear she will address issues that are bound to be painful and shocking, thus breaking many taboos. In doing this, she is able to connect especially with a young generation of feminists, and she encourages young people to view feminism within the framework of Africa’s history of liberation. She holds that Africa will only be decolonised once gender equality has become a reality all across the continent. For Awa Fall-Diop, feminism is not an ideology but a tool in the fight against oppression.
The jury of the Anne Klein Women’s Award is deeply impressed by Awa Fall-Diop’s life-long courage in advocating for marginalised groups and in challenging traditional structures – be it in institutions, in politics, or as part of wider social movements. In face of a social reality that is marked by increasing hostility against women and a resurgence of conservative norms, Awa Fall-Diop has remained unapologetically feminist. She is questioning narratives that are deeply engrained and is calling for social change unerringly and despite all pushback.
By giving the 15th Anne Klein Women’s Award to Awa Fall-Diop, the jury not only wants to pay tribute to the feminist struggles in Senegal and all of West Africa but also wants to reassert that these movements are neither isolated nor forgotten, and that their struggle for justice is appreciated beyond national boundaries, and in Germany too.
The members of the jury of the Anne Klein Women’s Award are:
Dr. Imme Scholz, Co-President of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, jury chair
Renate Künast, The German Green Party (Bündnis90/Die Grünen)
Sylvia Löhrmann, Minister of State, ret.
Prof. Dr. Michaele Schreyer, former Vice-President of the European Movement Germany and European commissioner, ret.
Jutta Wagner, attorney, former President of the German Women Lawyers Association
Berlin, 8 December 2025
Contact
Ulrike Cichon
e-mail cichon@boell.de
phone +49-(0)30-285 34-112
