The demands of the first-ever International Women's Day Rally in Australia, in 1928, were: equal pay for equal work, an 8-hour day for shop assistants, the basic wage for the unemployed and annual holidays on full pay.
This International Women's Day falls at a time when the environmental and economic crises of global capitalism are making life even harder for most women and the communities they live and work in.
Capitalism's crisis is hitting hard in the US and across Europe. It is particularly dire in Greece where school teachers and other essential service workers are being thrown out of work or being forced to take pay cuts of between 40-50%. Working-class women are being hit especially hard.
Women who wear the hijab, niqab or burqa are bearing the brunt of the rise of racism against people of Muslim faith or those from a Middle Eastern background since the terrorist attacks in the US on September 1, 2001.