International Women’s Day is the focal point in the movement for gender equality – recognising the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women around the world.
Celebrated on March 8, the day also serves as a reminder to continue the fight for the empowerment of women by addressing challenges such as gender-based violence, healthcare rights, economic disparities and access to education and work opportunities.
Scotland has had its fair share of women who have paved the way for change; the Suffragettes who fought for the vote in the early 20th century; the mothers and housewives taking on landlords in the 1915 Rent Strikes; through to the workers who won a 12-year equal pay battle with Glasgow City Council in 2019.
Strong women can be found at every chapter of the nation’s history – and for too long, the stories of ordinary women who have been the backbone of society for centuries have gone untold.
Here are photographs of women working, campaigning, raising families and having some fun in Scotland through the decades to mark International Women’s Day.
Women baiting lines for fishing with. Fishergate, North Street, St Andrews, 1845. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Four women with tubs and laundry on Skye, 1860-1880. George Washington Wilson. Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Scottish suffragettes welcoming Mary Phillips (standing third from left) on her release from Holloway Gaol, August 23 1908. Mary Phillips had been sent to prison for obstructing the police in Parliament Square on June 30. ‘General’ Drummond stands next to her in the centre of the photograph. (Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
Circa 1909: Scottish crofting women carding and spinning wool with their spinning wheels in the Highlands. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)
The arrest of Suffragette Olive Walton in Dundee, c 1914. (Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
Glasgow Rent Strikes led by the Glasgow Women’s Housing Association in 1915. (Photo by McDonald/Daily Record/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)
1918: Women workers testing in the central laboratory in a huge cordite explosive factory built at Gretna in 1915, providing employment for over 9,000 women during World War I. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)
War workers feed the charcoal kilns used for purifying sugar at a sugar refinery in Scotland, circa 1916. (Photo by G P Lewis/ Imperial War Museums via Getty Images)
Coal woman on a daily round in Glasgow – a photo from the ‘Great War’ magazine, vol. 156, UK, circa 1917. (Photo by: Igor Golovniov/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Female students at St Andrews University ride to the polling station where their new principal is voted, circa 1930. (Photo by Austrian Archives (S)/Imagno/Getty Images)
Players of Edinburgh City Girls’ football club during a training session in Edinburgh, Scotland, November 27 1937. (Photo by Martin/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
US Army nurses, newly arrived, line the rail of their vessel as it pulls into port of Greenock, Scotland, in European Theatre of Operations during World War 2, 1944. Image courtesy National Archives. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).
Workers on the shop floor at the James Templeton & Co carpet factory in Glasgow, March 1939. Original publication: Picture Post – 91 – Glasgow – pub. 1st April 1939 (Photo by Humphrey Spender/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Two women carrying children on a street in Glasgow, March 1939. Original publication: Picture Post – 91 – Glasgow – pub. April 1 1939 (Photo by Humphrey Spender/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Glaswegian housewives doing their laundry at a steamie connected to the public baths. Glasgow, March 1939. Original publication: Picture Post – 91 – Glasgow – pub. April 1 1939 (Photo by Humphrey Spender/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Public clothes lines on Glasgow Green, near the municipal washhouse in Glasgow, Scotland, 1939. Original Publication : Picture Post – 91- Glasgow – pub. 1st April 1939 (Photo by Humphrey Spender/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
January 31 1948: Two women chatting through an open window in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. Original Publication: Picture Post – 4499 – The Forgotten Gorbals – pub. 1948 (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
January 1 1939: Polisher women on their break time in Glasgow. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
October 17 1953: Three women enjoy window shopping among the Saturday night crowds on Sauchiehall street, Glasgow. Original Publication: Picture Post – 6754 – Glasgow: How A City Is Run – pub. 1953 (Photo by Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
A woman leads her cow along a remote country track on the island of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides, September 3 1955. Original publication: Picture Post – 7967 – The Crofters’ Isle – pub. 1955 (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
October 1 1955: Two young women strolling down a busy street in the Scottish industrial town of Kilmarnock. Original Publication: Picture Post – 8024 – Is Auld Killie Slump-Proof? – pub. 1955 (Photo by Malcolm Dunbar/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
High heels discarded as the girls join in the high jinks at the Locarno nightclub in Glasgow. September 27 1962. (Photo by Staff/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
Sisters Stephen, Imelda and Patrick with their motor scooters, Edinburgh, circa 1970. The nuns, of nursing order The Little Sisters Of The Assumption, used their scooters to attend urgent cases of illness in the working class communities of the city. (Photo by Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
A group of women arrive at Euston Station in London from Scotland to protest against the new inflation rate announced by British Prime Minister Edward Heath, UK, October 17 1973. (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
More than 200 women unanimously voted to continue their sit-in at Lee Leisurewear, Larkfield Estate, Greenock, February 9 1981. The women, and their male colleagues, started the sit-in last week after their American bosses said the factory was to close. David Wales, a member of the union’s national executive, visited the sit-in and was given overwhelming backing to continue the fight. (Photo by Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
Music fans at T in the Park festival held at Strathclyde Park, Lanarkshire, July 13 1996. (Photo by Gunion and McNeil/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
Glasgow Girls: Amal, Emma, Jennifer, Agnesa Murselaj and Roza Salih in 2007. The Drumchapel High School friends led a successful campaign to stop their friend Agnesa being deported in 2001. (Picture: Glasgow Girls/Facebook, Johnny McLaughlin)
Edinburgh, September 10: Scottish girl guides walk down the Royal Mile during a centenary procession of 100 girls on September 10, 2009 in Edinburgh. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
Govan, 2019/02/23: Campaigners from all over Scotland took part in a protest against the changes in the state pension for women. WASPI (Women Against State Pension Injustice) and several other groups took to the streets in protest. (Photo by Stewart Kirby/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Glasgow October 23: Demonstrators hold placards as they march for equal pay for Glasgow council workers on October 23, 2018 in Glasgow. An estimated 8,000 workers joined a 48-hour walkout, aimed at spurring the settlement of equal-pay claims from thousands of female workers. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
Edinburgh March 8: Activists attend a vigil and rally that are part of the International Day of Women’s Climate Action, organised by the Women’s Climate Strike, to protest against the disproportionate impacts of climate disruption on women on March 8, 2022 in Edinburgh. The Women’s Climate Strike is a grassroots organisation calling for women across the globe to set up a regular climate strike in their local area to demand immediate action on the climate catastrophe. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
Edinburgh March 8: Hundreds of swimmers took a sunrise dip in the North Sea at Portobello Beach, for the International Women’s Day on March 8, 2023 in Edinburgh. The event was organised as a fundraiser for Women’s Aid, which aims to end domestic violence against women and children. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
