International Women's Day is marked across the globe each year on March 8 to demand equal rights and protest against gendered violence.
Demonstrators and activists across the world staged protests demanding equality on International Women's Day.
But equality remains a long way off, with millions of girls' and women's lives still scarred by discrimination, poverty and violence.
March 8th has been sponsored by the United Nations since 1975 as International Women's Day, celebrating women's achievements and aiming to further their rights.
As the world marks International Women's Day, here is a snapshot of progress since the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, the most progressive blueprint for advancing women's rights.
Twenty-five percent of seats in national parliaments are held by women — more than double the 11 percent share in 1995.
In the last decade, 131 countries have enacted legal and regulatory reforms in support of gender equality.
In Afghanistan, frequently rated one of the world's worst places to be a woman, a handful of people took to the streets to mark Women's Day.
Women on average do three times more unpaid care and domestic work than men, limiting access to other opportunities.
The number of girls out of primary school has halved from 65 million to 32 million.
Women are paid 16 percent less than men on average, rising to 35 percent in some countries.
Nearly one in five women has faced violence from an intimate partner in the last year.
Nearly one in four girls aged 15–19 is neither employed, in education or training, compared to one in 10 boys.
Such events spark controversy in patriarchal Pakistan, and at one point in the capital, counter-protesters hurled sticks and stones at women's rights demonstrators, causing some injuries and forcing a crowd of people to seek cover before the police intervened.
Two-thirds of secondary school age girls are enrolled in school, up from half — although not all finish.
About 50 countries have liberalised their abortion laws in the last 25 years, with 18 lifting outright bans.
Child marriage affects one in five girls today, down from one in four in 1995.
Police in Kyrgyzstan detained dozens of women's rights activists on Sunday shortly after journalists witnessed the protesters being attacked by masked men.
Globally, 62 percent of women aged 25 to 54 are in the labour force compared to 93 percent of men — broadly unchanged since 1995.
At least 60 percent of countries still discriminate against daughters' rights to inherit land and other assets in either law or practice.
Girls born today can expect to live nearly eight more years than girls born in 1995 (an average of 75.2 years).
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