A month before Silvio Berlusconi goes on trial over allegations he paid an underage prostitute for sex, hundreds of Italian women rallied in Rome.
"Here, women have sex with someone powerful to get into parliament. Women are treated like objects. I'm ashamed to have a prime minister like Berlusconi", said protester Irene D'Onfronio, 62.
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States will push for women to be included in the transition to democracy in Arab countries.
"In the coming months and years, the women in Egypt and Tunisia and other nations have just as much right as the men to remake their governments to make them responsive, accountable, transparent", Clinton said at an awards ceremony.
But in Cairo, hundreds of Egyptian women rallying for their rights on Women's Day were confronted by men who shouted at them to return home, according to media reports.
In Turkey, women chanted "Don't Turn Our Wedding Dresses into Shrouds", as they marched against so-called honour killings, when a male family member kills a woman deemed to have brought shame on the family.
Hundreds of women demonstrated in Ivory Coast, meanwhile, to condemn the shooting of seven women at a rally last week demanding that strongman Laurent Gbagbo quit the presidency after losing elections.
Mostly dressed in white and wearing red headbands, they marched to "pay homage to the women killed", an organiser said. "We are not going to stop demonstrating until Laurent Gbagbo leaves".
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, the first woman to lead the giant South American country, said eradicating poverty is her top goal, and can be achieved through policies designed to help women and children.
Revelers in Rio de Janeiro paid tribute to Women's Day as only they can -- with an irreverent celebration near a Carmelite convent, a tradition during Carnival.
Meanwhile in Guatemala, where a culture of impunity saw nearly 700 women killed last year alone, the head of a commission on "femicide" called for a specific statute on the killing of women.
In Peru, at least 123 women were killed in 2010 by their partners or former partners, authorities said.
A group of women in Venezuela participated in an event in Caracas honoring the heroines of the country's independence.
Palestinian women took to the streets of Gaza to call for an end to the Israeli occupation.
In the West Bank town of Beit Ummar, dozens of women blocked a major road for half an hour to protest Israeli roadblocks.
"Part of the women's rights issue is the harm caused by the Israeli occupation", said activist Fadwa Khader. "Can you imagine women being woken up and kicked out of their homes in the early morning so their homes can be demolished to make way for settlements?"
The European Union hailed women's "crucial role in bringing about change in northern Africa".
"Amidst violence, women have joined the struggle for change", said European Commission Vice Presidents Catherine Ashton and Viviane Reding in a joint statement. "Women must be at the heart of the discussions over the future order".
Whether in T-shirts and jeans or robes and veils, tens of thousands of women have recently made their voices heard on the streets, from Tunis to Cairo, from Manama to Sanaa, to demand reform in a region long ruled by autocracies.
"The situation of women in Afghanistan is improving in spite of a lot of challenges", said Maria Bashir, an investigative prosecutor in Afghanistan who accepted an award from the US State Department for showing courage in the face of Taliban threats.
Bashir said women now hold public office and girls have access to education in her country. But she added that "Afghan women feel alarmed" about the looming withdrawal of NATO forces.
Angel Gurria, head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, called gender equality "a moral imperative as well as an economic necessity".
Visiting Finland -- a country whose president, prime minister and opposition leader are all women -- US Vice President Joe Biden echoed the call.
"The single most significant thing we can do in the 21st century to improve the prospect of peace and security is to educate more women", he said.
His boss President Barack Obama celebrated women's "extraordinary gains" over the past century as he called for greater gender equality.
In Greece, where the economic crisis has thrown disproportionately more women out of work, feminists staged a flash mob dubbed "Three Minutes Without Women" in a central square of Athens.
In Norway -- the first country in the world to force large companies to gender balance their boardrooms -- officials said the quotas should be extended to more companies.
A Moroccan human rights group called for the kingdom to inscribe gender equality in the constitution. Laws protecting girls from forced marriages are poorly enforced.
The minimum age of marriage for women was raised to 18 from 15 in 2004, unless a judge grants special permission. Still, about 42,000 requests to marry minors were made in 2009, mostly in rural areas.
Cambodian women were unable to mark the day publicly, as authorities banned a rally amid growing concern about a crackdown on freedom of expression in the country.
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