It is estimated that more than 5 million people worldwide participated in marches on Jan. 21, gathering together to show support for women’s rights, reproductive rights, gender and racial equality and many other interconnected causes.

 

But how did a march that started as a simple Facebook post, created by a group of women who planned to protest the outcome of the recent presidential election, garner so much attention? What are the implications of the historic gathering, and in what ways is it a continuation of the suffrage movement — which sought to give women the right to vote in the first place — and the women’s movement of the 1970s?