International Women’s Day was first celebrated in 1909, eleven years before women won the right to vote in the United States. It was an international worker’s rights conference organized by the Socialist Party of America, and has been celebrated on March 8th for the last century.

So naturally, this begs the question, why do we still need International Women’s Day? Okay, if you’re a feminist blogger like I am, you may not actually be asking that question. But having been asked multiple times today, I’ve compiled fifty very good reasons that we still need to recognize International Women’s Day (in no particular order). 

1. There have been fewer than sixty female heads of state in the last seventy years.
2. In the 20th century, there were only 28 elected female heads of state.
3. Only 17% of representatives in the US Congress are women.
4. The United States, the world’s biggest superpower in terms of military and GDP, has never had a woman as president.
5. Only 7 of the US’s 50 governors are women.
6. The highest number of female governors in the US at one time is 8. 
7. The US ranks 69th in the world in terms of women holding political office. 
8. In 2011, 80 new laws restricting access to abortion were introduced in the US.
9. In 2011, a fetus took the stand in an Ohio courtroom in an attempt to encourage stricter gestational limits on abortion. 
10. In the 2012 US presidential campaign, birth control is a more controversial and talked about topic than the economy.
11. 34% of American women have struggled to afford birth control at some point in their lifetime.
12. 87% of counties in the US do not have an abortion provider. 
13. 20% of young women in the US have experienced some form of reproductive coercion, including birth control sabotage.
14. Murder is the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US.
15. Three women are murdered by an intimate partner every day in the US.
16. In the United States, 40% of pregnancies are unplanned.
17. Teen pregnancy in the US has been on the rise since 2001.
18. The United Nations estimates that 70% of the world’s 1.3 billion poor people are women.
19. Women have not achieved socioeconomic equality with men in any country in the world.
20. Nearly 80% of the world’s millions of refugees are women.
21. Only seven of the world’s highest ranking diplomats in the United Nations are women. (That’s 3.7%.)
22. Two-thirds of all illiterate adults are women.
23. Two-thirds of the 130 million children not enrolled in school worldwide are girls.
24. In most countries, women work more than twice as many unpaid hours as men.
25. In Saudi Arabia, women are not legally allowed to drive.
26. Women cannot vote in Vatican City, because they cannot be cardinals in the Catholic Church.
27. In Lebanon, women must prove that they have an elementary education before they are allowed to vote. The same is not required of men. 
28. In the United States, women make significantly less than white men in the same job.
29. White women in the US make 79 cents per dollar made by white men.
30. Black women in the US make 69 cents per dollar made by white men.
31. Hispanic women in the US make 59 cents per dollar made by white men.
32. In the US, women make less than their male counterparts at every level of education. 
33. A sizable gender gap persists in the science and technology fields in the US. 
34. In sub-Saharan Africa, 60% of those infected with HIV are women. 
35. HIV/AIDS is the third leading cause of death for US women aged 25-44.
36. 1,400 women die in childbirth every day.
37. Unsafe abortions kill 70,000 women every year.
38. 1,122 of the world’s billionaires are men – that’s more than 90%.
39. In the Congo, 48 women are raped every hour.
40. 1 in 3 women worldwide will be raped in her lifetime. That’s over 1 billion people. 
41. 1 out of every 6 American women is sexually abused in her lifetime.
42. Nearly 90% of all rape victims in the US are women.
43. 34% of indigenous women in the US have been or will be raped in their lifetime.  
44. Women make up 40% of the labor force worldwide, but only hold 1% percent of the world’s wealth. 
45. In the US, employers are not required to provide paid maternity leave.
46. Firing an employee because she needs to pump or breastfeed is not considered discrimination in the US. 
47. Women make up only 5% of directors in Hollywood.
48. 38% of films released in the US in 2011 featured “between zero and one” female character.
49. Only 3 out of 9 films nominated for Best Picture at the 2012 Academy Awards passed the Bechdel Test. 
50. 39% of Americans would still prefer to work for a man rather than a woman. 

So there you have it. Those are 50 very good reasons to continue to observe International Women’s Day, from Hollywood to Saudi Arabia. This is by no means an inclusive list; these are the first fifty reasons that I was able to come up with, and it would have been no hardship to come up with a hundred more. And while certainly not all of these problems are equal in their severity, all of them have the same root cause: the misogynistic belief that women are simply not equal to men. Women are still not treated equally in any country in the world.

And that brings me to one final reason to continue to observe International Women’s Day, no matter how many snarky Facebook statuses inquire as to why there isn’t an International Men’s Day. The 51st reason that we must continue to observe IWD: to ensure that the fantastic progress that has been made by women all over the world in the last two centuries continues, for ourselves and our posterity (girls and boys). The fight for gender equality isn’t over in any country, and the only way we’ll keep winning battles is to fight them together. We must fight inequality in all of its forms so that men and women everywhere can lead fulfilling lives freely.

Happy International Women’s Day, everyone. Let’s do it again next year.