Reporting Fellow Stories for Women's History Month 2024

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Acid attack survivors advocate for new laws to end gender-based violence in Pakistan. Professional athletes in Nigeria fight for pay equity. And in Mexico, mothers lead the search for their missing daughters. These are just some of the stories our Reporting Fellows featured in their 2023 projects about gender equality. 

Over and over again, women around the world have had their rights denied by patriarchal systems. But, as Pulitzer Center President and CEO Jon Sawyer once said, “Telling their stories is an essential step toward real change.” 

This Women’s History Month, we invite you to join us in taking that step by revisiting some of our most relevant Reporting Fellow projects about women’s empowerment.

Raheela Raheem was 16 years old when she was attacked with acid in Karachi, Pakistan. It took six years for her to prevail in court against the man who attacked her. He received a lifelong prison sentence. 

“While fighting my legal battle, I wasn’t thinking about myself but of future Raheelas,” Raheem told 2022 Northwestern University-Qatar Reporting Fellows Laiba Mubashar and Muhammad Wasay Mir. “I wanted to make sure nobody has to experience what I underwent.” 

Raheem’s legal battle is depicted alongside other survivor stories in the Reporting Fellow project Acid Attacks: A Social Epidemic in a Global Pandemic.

In the project Nigerian Super Falcons Find World Cup Success Despite Insufficient Federation Support, 2023 Swarthmore Reporting Fellow Jacinta Fernandes-Brough explored the Nigerian national women's soccer team’s 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup success for The Athletic. Despite the Super Falcons' successful tournament run—which included defeating Olympic gold medalists and the host team—players must still fight for pay and gender equity at home.

In Mexico, 10 women a day are victims of femicide. Yet, only 27% of women’s deaths are investigated as such. For her project Ni Una Menos: Mexico’s Women Combating Femicide, 2023 Syracuse University Reporting Fellow Tania Ortiz reported on feminist collectives for grieving families who seek governmental change and want to address the country’s gender-based violence. 

Jean Chapiro, a 2022 Post-Grad Reporting Fellow, got to know Araceli Salcedo for the award-winning project Hasta Encontrarlos (Till We Find Them). Shortly after her daughter went missing in Veracruz, Mexico, Salcedo started a community collective to search for lost and missing children. The 350-member group has successfully found 15 people alive, returned 71 bodies, and spotted 53 clandestine graves since 2021.

Laura Goodfield, a 2022 Gender Equity and George Washington University Fellow, reported on the project Beyond the U-Bahn: Gendered Mobility in Berlin. Globally, women use public transportation at higher rates than men. Berlin is no exception, making its city-dwelling women best-suited to answer the question: How can we make public transportation better?

Three-quarters of women surveyed by the National Science Foundation called sexual harassment and assault  “a fact of life” in 2022, revealing a decades-long history of pervasive gender-based harassment and mistreatment at Antarctic research stations. For the reporting project COLDEX: The Search for Earth’s Oldest Ice, Northwestern University graduate and 2022 Climate Science Reporting Fellow Christian Elliot covered the recent sexual harassment reckoning.

Craftswork is an essential part of cultural heritage for women across Kutch, India. The project Threads of Kutch: The Changing Lives of India's Craftswomen, by 2023 University of Pennsylvania Reporting Fellow Taja Mazaj, explored the link between crafts and identity, aiming to answer the question: Can traditional art withstand social and economic upheavals?

The Fashion Industry Through an Intersectional Feminist Lens by 2023 Glendale Community College Reporting Fellow Brittany Klintworth addressed the fashion industry’s poor reputation of exploiting women. Klintworth’s project highlighted possible exceptions and solutions to this issue.

Although illegal, 97% of Guinean women aged 15 to 49 have undergone some form of female genital cutting (FGC). In the project FGC in Guinea: The Role Religion Plays, 2022 Reporting Fellow Madeline Hart examined the link between tradition, religion, and women’s agency in the more than 2,000-year-old practice.

"I was overcome by the reality that, yes, there is a massive dearth of people who fiercely and truly love Black women," 2022 Spelman College Reporting Fellow Nailah Reine Barnes wrote after reporting on the 59th annual Venice Biennale.  Her project, Souls of Our Nations: The Venice Biennale through a Transnational Black Feminist Lens, focused on artist Simone Leigh, the first Black woman to represent the U.S. at the oldest and largest international platform of contemporary art.

This month and every month, the Pulitzer Center is proud to support Reporting Fellows' stories that highlight women as changemakers. You can find more from past Fellows and grantees in our “Human Rights” focus area.