WOMEN across the world will demand equal pay, reproductive rights, education, justice, decision-making jobs and other essential needs during demonstrations marking the UN International Women’s Day on Friday.

This comes as many countries across the world continue to guarantee women’s rights, including in Turkey where at least 71 women have been killed this year.

Officially recognised by the UN in 1977, International Women’s Day is commemorated across the world by events rooted in the struggle of women to win and improve their rights.

IWD is an official holiday in more than 20 countries, including Burkina Faso, Russia and Cuba, the only one in the Americas.

Although IWD is still an official holiday in Afghanistan, women face major curbs, including on education, being forced to wear a burka or hijab in public and are mandated by the Taliban to be accompanied by a male relative while travelling.

In the United States, the Supreme Court rolled back women’s reproductive rights when in June 2022 it overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that guaranteed women the federal right to an abortion.

But there have been gains for women.

France on Monday became the only country to explicitly guarantee abortion as a constitutional right.

Elsewhere, women have often been forced to struggle to publicly celebrate IWD.

In Turkey last year women braved an official ban on an IWD march in Istanbul, and protested for about two hours before police used tear gas to disperse the crowd and detain dozens of people. 

Since the beginning of this year at least 71 women have been killed in Turkey.

At least 403 women were killed in Turkey last year, most of them by current or former spouses and other men close to them, according to the We Will Stop Femicides Platform.

Its secretary-general Fidan Ataselim said men “are violently trying to suppress the progress of women.”