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)

Soap Bubble Structures by Kym Cox. Bubbles optimise space and minimise their surface area for a given volume of air. This phenomenon makes them a useful tool in many areas of research, in particular, materials science and “packing” – how things fit together. Bubble walls drain under gravity, thin at the top, thick at the bottom, which interferes with travelling lightwaves to create bands of colour. Black spots show the wall is too thin for interference colours, indicating the bubble is about to burst. (Photo by Kym Cox/2019 Science Photographer of the Year/RPS)

A prisoner from the Pedrinhas prison is carried to receive medical help after he was injured during a fight between rival gangs inside the jail, in Sao Luiz, capital of Maranhao state, January 8, 2014. The recent posting on a major Brazilian news website of a video filmed last December 17 by Pedrinhas prisoners of the decapitated and tortured bodies of rival inmates inside the jail has highlighted some of the problems present in the country's prison system which houses nearly twice as many prisoners as its capacity, according to official statistics. (Photo by Douglas Cunha/Reuters/O Estado do Maranhão)

Bob Steele, of Jefferson, Texas, positions his bears during The Great Bear Show at the Dubuque (Iowa) County Fair on July 25, 2012. (Photo by Jessica Reilly/Telegraph Herald)

Freshmen in Zhengzhou Institute of Aeronautical Industry Management head bottles of mineral water for upright stand during military training on September 17, 2015 in Zhengzhou, Henan Province of China. More than 6,800 freshmen in the school are required to take part in the military training. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)

In this July 17, 2015 photo, Michael Chilton squeezes into a corner of his car to make a quick repair to some body panels after he ran into a wall during dirt track racing in the late model division at the Ponderosa Speedway in Junction City, Ky. He banged up the car in the qualifying round and had a few minutes to fix it before the final race. (Photo by David Stephenson/AP Photo)

Participants hang from ropes as they learn how to use safety gears at an experience centre for construction safety training in Beijing, September 5, 2014. The centre which opened in June 2014 was established to educate workers about construction safety. According to the centre, about 1,000 construction workers undergo 3-hour classes which comprises of 33 modules every month. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

People play "Palin", a traditional ritual and ancestral Mapuche game played with curved sticks called "Chuecas" and a wooden ball, during a meet on Dia de la Raza (Day of the Races), also known as Columbus Day in Vina del Mar, Chile October 11, 2015. (Photo by Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters)