Open Call: This is Gender – Gender and Disability Photography & Visual Arts Competition

Deadline: 4 March 2025

The Global Health 50/50 is thrilled to seek applications for its Gender and Disability Photography & Visual Arts Competition to explore disability as the product of social, institutional, architectural and representational systems that invoke different forms of participation of people with physical and cognitive differences in society.

Categories

Please submit your images under one of the listed sub-categories:
- Systems: Political and Institutional:
  - How gender and disability shape interactions with systems like healthcare, education, and employment
  - How policies either reinforce barriers or empower disabled individuals and communities across genders
  - What the fight for more equal systems looks like.
- Environment and Space: Public and Private:
  - How gender and disability influence the experiences of public and private spaces
  - How accessibility or the design of spaces challenge or reinforce power dynamics
  - How they create/recreate space to centre inclusivity and accessibility.
- Social Relations: Care and Communities:
  - How gender and disability intersect in experiences of care and caregiving
  - How created communities and rights movements challenge societal norms of gender and disability and provide new spaces for self-empowerment and joy
  - The ways gender and disability shape social expectations around relationships, family, and/or friendships.
- Bodymind and Embodiment: The Body and Senses:
  - How the body, through the lens of disability and gender, shapes conceptions of the ‘self’
  - The way materiality or sensation of the body intersects with gender identity
  - How emotions, intuition, or physical sensations guide understandings of gender and disability.
- World-building: Imagining Potential Futures:
  - What futures are possible when people dismantle ableism and gender norms and stereotypes altogether? What new systems, spaces, and relationships could emerge?
  - What a future world looks like when gender and disability are central to its design and culture.

Prize Information

Win a £500 cash prize for top images.
Have your work reviewed by global experts.
Gain visibility in “This is Gender” collections, GH5050 reports, and international media.
Join a creative community with access to opportunities, insights, and updates.

Eligibility Criteria

All visual media forms are welcome (including photography, digital art, painting, collage, multimedia etc). They’re particularly interested in amplifying the voices and experiences of people with disabilities and welcome a variety of visual media and perspectives from a diverse range of geographical regions and gender identities.

Judging Criteria

A panel of international experts in disability representation, visual culture, gender and global health will decide winners across two categories:
- Visual merit and creativity:
  - Strong visual impact.
  - Thoughtful, considered composition and framing.
  - Use of colour (or intentional lack of colour) and creativity.
- Storytelling and perspective:
  - Clear link to gender and/or disability.
  - Impactful story behind the image.
  - Unique perspective on the subject.

Application Requirements

Each contestant may submit up to three individual submissions under one of the 5 sub-categories accompanied by the following elements:
- A brief narrative on the significance of the image to the themes of the competition
- Where and when the submission was created
- Short artist biography
- Acceptance of the “This is Gender” Terms and Conditions.

For more information, visit Global Health 50/50.