The Margherita von Brentano Award is presented every two years by the Executive Board of Freie Universität to outstanding individuals and innovative projects that have rendered outstanding services to support women and/or gender research. It has been awarded since 1995. The previous award winners include the Berlin lawyer Seyran Ateş, an initiative group calling for the founding of a Center for Gender Research in Medicine (GiM), and the MISEAL collaborative project that focuses on gender equality, especially equal participation of different social groups, in higher education in Latin American countries.

The name patron of the award, Margherita von Brentano, earned her doctorate in 1948 under Martin Heidegger, and in 1971 she was appointed a professor at the Institute of Philosophy at Freie Universität. In 1970 she became the first woman to be elected vice president of the university. As a critical intellectual at the beginning of the 1960s, she became concerned with overcoming professional discrimination against women, especially their almost complete exclusion from the higher hierarchical levels at universities and research institutions. She was also involved in other societal areas: until her death in 1995, she promoted the erection of a Berlin memorial to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.