Bikini Contest in Daytona Beach, Florida’s Atlantic coast, circa 1980s. (Photo by Evan Hurd/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

A woman kneels down to pray at a “Pray and swipe right” event organised by online dating app Tinder, with social-distancing stickers featuring its flame logo on the praying ground, a photo booth where people can take profile pictures for their new accounts, and free offering sets, at the Trimuriti shrine on Valentine's Day in Bangkok, Thailand February 14, 2022. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

This photo taken on October 20, 2018 shows tourists posing for a photo on a middle of a railway track passing through an old residential district in central Hanoi. (Photo by Nhac Nguyen/AFP Photo)

Guests attend preview event for “Candytopia”, the outrageously interactive candy wonderland, opening in San Francisco, USA on September 6, 2018. (Photo by Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images for Candytopia)

A butterfly is seen at a farm in Beykoz disrtict of Istanbul, Turkey on October 26, 2021. Cigdem Unlu runs a farm where 800 butterflies live and being presented to the visitors as the environment exclusively weathered for butterflies. (Photo by Elif Ozturk Ozgoncu/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak speaks to the media after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Chancellery on April 23, 2008 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Hotel ushers pose for a photo at Tiananmen Square as delegates attend the second plenary session of the National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing, China, March 9, 2018. The CPPCC is the top advisory body of the Chinese political system and runs alongside the annual plenary meetings of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), together known as “Lianghui” or “Two Meetings”. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

As the world marks the International Day of the Girl Child, women's rights activists point to progress on a wide array of issues but say more needs to be done to protect girls from child marriage, sexual assault and other forms of exploitation. Here is a selection of pictures showing the daily lives of girls across the globe, all taken by female Associated Press photojournalists. Here: In this December 14, 2015, file photo, a young clown rides in the back of a car following a procession to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Hundreds belonging to various clown associations made their annual pilgrimage to the Basilica to pay their respects to the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)