Today is International Women’s Day, which means you’re only allowed to listen to The Spice Girls and Madonna on the office stereo. It also means we pay homage to the incredible women that have gone before us and brought forward women’s rights, whether that’s in terms of suffrage, professionally, or by changing attitudes. It’s celebrated every year on March 8, and it’s thought that the first one was held in New York. Back then, it was called National Woman’s Day, and celebrated for the first time on February 28, 1909, writes metro.co.uk.

In August 1910, at the International Socialist Women’s Conference, it was decided by the 100 delegates from 17 countries present that there needed to be a day to promote equal rights including votes for women. The following year, on March 19, over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland celebrated the cause and held protests for women’s rights. In the US, it was marked on the last Sunday in February.

In 1914, IWD was held on March 8, and in London Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested in front of Charing Cross station on her way to speak to a crowd in Trafalgar Square. Other countries continued to have their own celebrations (with China even making the day a public holiday) but it wasn’t until 1977, when the United Nations General Assembly invited member states to observe March 8 as the UN Day for women’s rights and world peace. The day is now a holiday in many countries including Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, China (for women only), Cuba, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar (for women only), Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zambia.