The Alison Chadwick Memorial Award is a financial award made to either a female mountaineer or an all-female expedition.

In 1978 Alison Chadwick, a British climber, died close to the summit of Annapurna I whilst a member of the successful American women’s’ expedition. Three years earlier, together with Janucz Onyszkiewicz (her Polish husband) and Wanda Rutkiewicz she had already reached the summit of Gasherbrum III - at the time the world's highest unclimbed summit, and probably for ever the highest virgin summit climbed by a woman.

Following her death, a Memorial Fund was instituted in her name 'to provide grants to further British and Polish women's mountaineering in the world's greater ranges, ie: further afield than the Alps'. At the end of 1990, the entire assets of the fund were very generously passed to the Mount Everest Foundation which has continued to award grants broadly in line with the original guidelines.

However, rather than administer the Award as a separate fund, the MEF decided that it would award the grant to an applicant for MEF support - either an all-female expedition or an individual female team member - which also meets the above criteria. Hence, there are no separate application forms, and there is no need for an applicant to indicate that she wishes to be considered for the Award: eligibility is considered automatically during the normal MEF Screening process.

Recipients to date

As indicated above, sometimes the award is made to an expedition as a whole (typically an all-female team), and sometimes to an individual female member of an otherwise male team. The actual recipient is indicated in the third column below