Indignant over women being barred from speaking at an anti-slavery convention, Americans Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott congregate a few hundred people at their nation’s first women’s rights convention in New York. Together they demand civil, social, political and religious rights for women in a Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal.”

The women’s right to vote in particular is met with derision by the public. But a movement is born.

The number of signatures in a ‘monster’ 270-metre long suffrage petition presented to New Zealand’s parliament in 1873. Soon after, New Zealand becomes the first self-governing nation to allow women to vote and inspires suffragists across the globe.

The bicycle as we know it today, paves way for less restrictive clothing and greater mobility for women in some regions.

Marked annually on 8 March, the first International Women’s Day in 1911 amasses more than one million people across Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland for women’s suffrage and labour rights. In its early years, the Day becomes a mechanism to protest World War I. Most notably, in Russia, a large women-led demonstration breaks out demanding “bread and peace!” Four days later, the Czar abdicates. Now a Russian national holiday, the Day is what some historians believe ignited the Russian Revolution.

In the first known campaign of its kind, the Egyptian Society of Physicians goes against tradition by declaring the negative health effects of Female Genital Mutilation. A practice that at least 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone, it takes until the late 20th Century before the term FGM is globally adopted and the practice explicitly classified as a form of violence. Today, the UN, grassroots women’s movements, civil society and others are working together to put an end to the practice.

Incensed by their social standing under colonial rule, the Igbo women send palm leaves — similar to today’s Facebook invite — to their fellow sisters across Southeastern Nigeria. Together they descend in the thousands to “sit on” or make “war on” undemocratically appointed chiefs by publicly shaming them through singing, dancing, banging on their walls and even tearing down roofs. Although the backlash against protests turn deadly, it eventually forces the chiefs to resign and market tax impositions on women to be dropped.

What would you do without clean clothes for weeks? In 1945, Dubliners in Ireland learn the hard way. Tired of unhealthy work conditions, low wages, overtime and limited leave, around 1,500 unionized laundresses go on strike:

We leave it all to you... To gain what we are due.

Commercial laundries get hit, a big business at the time. More than three months (and lots of dirty clothes) later, the strike ends on a victory and gives all Irish workers a statutory second week of annual holidays.

In the inaugural session of the UN General Assembly in 1946, American Eleanor Roosevelt famously reads an "open letter to the women of the world", urging for their increased involvement in national and international affairs.

Translated into more than 500 languages and dialects today, the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) for the first time in human history spells out basic rights and fundamental freedoms that all human beings — men and women alike — should enjoy.

A symbol of popular feminist resistance, the Mirabal sisters — Minerva, María Teresa, and Patria — also known as Las Mariposas (the butterflies) form an opposition movement to openly protest the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. On 25 November 1960, the sisters are assassinated. The public outcry propels the anti-Trujillo movement, toppling the dictatorship within a year. The day of their brutal murders has since been marked on 25 November to raise awareness on ending violence against women.

The number of women, representing a tenth of the nation’s population, who gather at Iceland’s capital Reykjavik in 1975 to protest economic inequality. The “Women’s Day Off” puts the city’s services, schools and business at a virtual standstill.

The first International Women’s Year, the first UN Decade for Women and the first world conference on women in Mexico escalates global discourse on women’s rights.

A relentless civil war impels thousands of Liberian women to form a movement. Driven by activist Leymah Gbowee, the movement employs various tactics, most notably: a sex strike to pressure their men to partake in peace talks, and a sit-in on peace negotiations by women who threaten to disrobe as a means to shame and prevent male delegates from leaving without some resolution.

The movement is so successful it ends a 14-year civil war and leads to the election of Africa’s first woman head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

In Northern India’s poverty-stricken Banda ../assetsrict of Uttar Pradesh state, a handful of bamboo-wielding women take matters into their own hands when they hear of a neighbour abusing his wife. Together, they intervene, forcing the husband to acknowledge the abuse and put a stop to it. The modest movement on domestic abuse later snowballs into a statewide one: Today, a “gang” of tens of thousands of women dressed in pink (gulabi) collectively tackle social injustices against women in the state and are inspiring similar uprisings in the nation.

Media plays a powerful role in shaping attitudes towards women and is at the same time a window into how women are viewed. While sexism in media is still plentiful, viral ads and campaigns online are challenging these very stereotypes.

From the Arabian Peninsula to the capitals of North Africa, streams of women vigorously protest for their rights as part of a broader uprising: the pan-Arab movement. The outcry thrusts women into the global limelight, challenging perceptions of them as passive. This determination is not new though: In Morocco, tribal Soulaliyate women continue to fight for land rights; in Tunisia, activism propels gender equality being enshrined in the nation’s constitution; and in Lebanon, campaigning leads to a controversial rape law being scrapped.

It’s a moment that wakes up the world: The attack on a school girl and education activist Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan. Surviving a gunshot wound to the head and neck, watch Malala speak as she marks her first public appearance at the UN on her 16th birthday in 2013.

The estimated number of people worldwide who attend the “women’s march” on 21 January 2017 in solidarity for women’s rights. It’s one of numerous mass uprisings that mark the decade, including: in India, following the gang rape of a student; across Latin America after a succession of femicides; and in Nigeria, following the kidnapping of almost 280 school girls.