Wednesday March 8 marks International Women's Day, with festivals, concerts and exhibitions among the numerous events planned around the world to celebrate the achievements of women in society. The annual event has been held since the early 1900s and traditionally promotes a different theme each year, with this year's edition calling on people to #BeBoldForChange and push for a more gender-inclusive working world. Reuters photographers have been speaking with women in a range of professions around the world about their experiences of gender inequality. Here: Yolaina Chavez Talavera, 31, a firefighter, poses for a photograph in front of a truck at a fire station in Managua, Nicaragua, February 22, 2017. (Photo by Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters)

A volunteer approaches a male toad to pick him up from a road near Berlin on March 18, 2012 in Gueterfelde, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Military vehicles surround a wreckage of a trolleybus, in Volgograd, Russia, Monday, December 30, 2013. A bomb blast tore through a trolleybus in the city of Volgograd on Monday morning, killing at least 10 people a day after a suicide bombing that killed at least 17 at the city's main railway station. Volgograd is about 650 kilometers (400 miles) northeast of Sochi, where the Olympics are to be held. (Photo by Denis Tyrin/AP Photo)

A woman shows her inked finger after casting her ballot to vote in the first phase of India's general election at a polling station in Kalamati village, Dinhata district of Cooch Behar in the country's West Bengal state on April 19, 2024. (Photo by Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP Photo)

Children of Indian laborers play on make-shift swings in Amritsar, India, May 12, 2015. (Photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP Photo)

Girls ride on a donkey cart with grass for animals on the outside of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan May 19, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Parwiz)

“Show Time”. It's a normal behavior of mantis. They're doing defence. When they're afraid of; raising their arms and spreading their wings. They looks like smiling dancer. Photo location: Nicosia, Cyprus. (Photo and caption by Hasan Baglar/National Geographic Photo Contest)

Principle Ballet Dancer, Ekaterina Bulgutova, of the Russian State Ballet, with the Nutcracker part of Christmas Ballet Season in Cardiff which starts at St Davids Hall on December 20, 2016 in Cardiff, England. (Photo by Kiran Ridley/Barcroft Images)