A century ago, Clara Zetkin of Germany proposed an international day for women of the world to press for their right to full citizenship.

Today, generations of hard work have paid off. In many countries, women hold top government and legislative posts, manage multinational businesses, and stand side by side with men on the podium when laurels for scientific and technological achievement are awarded.

Still, we cannot take what we have achieved for granted. Around the world, appalling examples of the mistreatment of women are reported daily. Girls in many countries are still barred from receiving an education. Many young women still toil in sweatshops like those that claimed the lives of women workers in New York in 1911 and in China in the 1980s and 1990s.

Nujood Ali, the best-selling author of "I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced", is a rare example of a child bride who survived the barbaric treatment that is still the norm in many countries.

We Chinese are justly proud of the progress that has been made in the People's Republic. Where once women's feet were bound, we like to say, women now hold up half the sky.

Yet even here, progress is relative. The prejudice in favor of boys remains alarming. Although nearly as many women as men graduate from college, women often must outperform their classmates to get a job.

At the other end of the spectrum, the first generation of modern Chinese professional women is being pushed into early retirement. By legal decree, professional women are required to retire five years before men. In the prime of their working lives, many are passed over for promotion because they are "nearing retirement", to the too-evident pleasure of their men counterparts.

In China and much of the developed world, the heavy lifting has been done. The sustained effort necessary to assure true gender equality lies ahead.