Today is International Women’s Day, and governments and civil society around the world are celebrating it with events marking progress towards gender equality and calling for additional action to achieve full equality.

But few people know where the day originally comes from. In 1857, female garment workers in New York City staged mass protests against low wages and poor working conditions. Police attacked the demonstrators, forcing them to disperse, but the event helped spur the creation of the first women’s labor union.

By 1908, this women’s labor movement had expanded, and 15,000 women marched in March of that year for voting rights, better pay, shorter working hours, and an end to child labor. In May of that year, the Socialist Party —which won 900,000 votes four years later — declared that the last Sunday in February would be National Women’s Day. The first National Women’s Day was celebrated in 1909 and soon other countries jumped on board, marking it International Women’s Day.

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