MANILA • Campaigners for gender equality marked International Women's Day yesterday with protests, discussion panels and celebrations all over the world.

Thousands of women took to the streets of Manila in protest against President Rodrigo Duterte's alleged misogyny as an exhibition marking the day showed the clothes of Philippine rape victims.

About 4,000 protesters marched on Malacanang presidential palace chanting slogans against Mr Duterte, who has repeatedly made jokes about rape and said last year that when he was a teenager, he indecently "touched" the family maid.

The Cambodian authorities blocked hundreds of demonstrators calling for an end to violence against women, from marching through the capital Phnom Penh.

Some 500 protesters, mostly women, had gathered at the city's Olympic Stadium with the intention of walking about 2km to the Office of the Council of Ministers to deliver a petition.

In Spain, several hundred women gathered in central Madrid around midnight to bang pots and pans and demand more rights for women in a society they say is still dominated by men. In Barcelona, demonstrators blocked a major thoroughfare, some wearing purple wigs - the colour associated with gender equality.

In Paris, demonstrators from Amnesty International waved placards saying "Honk for women's rights" outside Saudi Arabia's embassy and urged the release of jailed women activists, including those who campaigned for the right to drive in the conservative kingdom.

In London, Britain's Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle was due to join singer Annie Lennox, model Adwoa Aboah, former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard and others in a panel discussion about issues affecting women today.

In the Russian capital, Moscow, men thronged to the Rizhsky flower market to buy flowers for female loved ones and colleagues to be offered on this widely celebrated day seen as a rare opportunity for Russian men to show a romantic side.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, DPA, REUTERS