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The Activist Beat with Rose Aguilar, host of Your Call on KALW in San Francisco is a weekly roundup of progressive activism that the mainstream media ignores, undercovers, or misrepresents.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. The Socialist Party of America first recognized this day in honor of the 1908 garment workers’ strike in New York, where women demanded better working conditions.

In 1911, it was officially called International Working Women’s Day. Over one million European women and men from the socialist movement took to the streets to demand the right to vote, hold public office, and protest unfair wages and poor working conditions for women. It was about factory workers. It was about class. The movement eventually spread around the globe.

So where are we 100 years later? Studies show that women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours but earn just 10 percent of the income and own only one percent of the property. In a statement marking the 100th anniversary, Michelle Bachelet, the former Chilean President who is now head of the UN women’s agency, said girls are still less likely to be in school than boys, almost two-thirds of illiterate adults are women, and every 90 seconds a woman dies during pregnancy. Women still earn less than men for the same work and have unequal inheritance rights and access to land.

Women in more than 1,000 cities, towns, and villages around the world marked the centennial with rallies, protests, and actions.

Women in Egypt called for a million women march in Tahrir Square to demand fair and equal opportunity for all Egyptians, beyond gender, religions, or class. No one could’ve predicted this two months ago.

Palestinian women took to the streets in the West Bank and Gaza to demand basic human rights and the right of return.

Yesterday hundreds of Afghan women marched in Kabul wearing banners that said, “We want justice.”

Pakistani human rights activists took to the streets in Lahore to raise awareness about violence against women and rape victims who are denied justice.

Over 4,000 women marched to the Presidential Palace in Manila, Philippines to demand the government ensure full access to reproductive health services and impose measures to mitigate the increasing cost of commodities. On Saturday, Police tried to stop women from approaching the main gate of the US embassy where they spoke out against the presence of American troops stationed in the Philippines.

A week long campaign focusing on women’s health and empowerment was launched in New Delhi.

Even though International Women’s Day is a public holiday in Cambodia, Phnom Penh authorities banned a public rally organized by trade unions and NGOs. No explanation was given. Organizers said it’s the latest crackdown on freedom of expression.

Here in the states, women are marking the centennial in California by demanding a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights.

The most important action we can take no matter where we are is to demand international family planning. Seventeen years ago world leaders gathered in Cairo, Egypt, and declared access to reproductive health care to be a universal right, but for many that right has not been realized and that includes women in the United States. According to the Population Institute, 215 million married women in the developed world want to avoid a pregnancy, but are not using a modern method of birth control. Tens of millions of young men and women are at risk of acquiring HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

It will cost an estimated $3.6 billion more a year to provide family planning services to those 215 million women. To put that in perspective, consider the $30 billion contract the U.S. government recently gave to Boeing to build 179 Air Force refueling planes.

It’s a small price to pay to empower women, boost gender equality, keep girls in school longer, break the cycle of poverty, and help to protect the environment.

The Population Institute says it may be the single most important thing we can all do.

This is Rose Aguilar for Uprising.