42 Rights Women Fought For — And Won

And How Much We Have Left Still to Do

Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. Here, she’s pictured making history while being attacked by the race organizer.

Women’s History Month is here, and so is International Women’s Day. And with them comes a time to celebrate women, to reflect on our history, and see how far we’ve come.

It’s easy to look at the state of the world for women, especially in the West, and think “we’ve made it” in many ways. Women can work in almost any field they want, marry who they want, if they want, and so on. And yet, it is just as easy to look at the state of the world — 1 in 3 women globally will experience sexual violence in her lifetime, less than 20% of land is owned by women — and feel the weight of the distance we have left to go.

That’s why keeping our struggle in context is vital.

So here are things we — women — wouldn’t have without feminism.

• Voting rights: New Zealand was the first country where women gained the right to vote, in 1893 — while other countries followed suit across the next century. While hurdles are in place in some regions of the world for women to vote, legally, there is no longer any country in the world where women are not allowed to vote.
• Property rights
• The right to divorce
• Bank accounts
• The right to work