What is "women's work?" Anything you can think of.
Whether it's the work of keeping a home and raising a family, building and inspiring a community, or bringing home a wage from a daily job, the wide variety of work women do is worth celebrating. Women are one of the largest growing forces in the global economy -- even though they are paid less than men worldwide. In 2011, the World Bank revealed that women make up 40 percent of the world's labor force, but hold just 1 percent of the world's wealth.
The run-up to International Women's Day on March 8 is the perfect occasion to recognize the working women of the world, whether they labor in an office or on a farm. From building wind turbines to harvesting bananas, fighting fires to rolling cigars, here are 39 images of working women all over the globe:
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1
A Pakistani woman arranges bricks as she works at a brick factory on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, Monday, March 8, 2010. (Muhammed Muheisen/AP)
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An apiarist works in Rio Grande Do Norte State, Brazil on Jan. 12, 2008. (Lena Trindade/Brazil Photos/LightRocket/Getty Images)
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Nepalese women shelter under umbrellas as they work to remove weed from a paddy field in Chitwan, about 44 miles southwest of Katmandu, Nepal, Sunday, Aug.1, 2010. (/APGemunu Amarasinghe/AP)
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4
A North Korean woman works at the Kim Jong Suk Pyongyang textile factory, Thursday, July 31, 2014, in Pyongyang, North Korea. (Wong Maye-E/AP)
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In this Wednesday, March, 5, 2014 photo, Afghan women boxers practice at the Kabul stadium boxing club. (Massoud Hossaini/AP)
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An Indian female laborer works at a brick factory in Allahabad on March 7, 2013. (Sanjay Kanojia/AFP/Getty Images)
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7
Pallaqueras, female gold miners, search for gold on a load of waste rock from the gold mines on Aug. 4 2012 in La Rinconada, Peru. (Jan Sochor/Latincontent/Getty Images)
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A Bedouin woman of the Al-Qiyaan tribe stands while working outside her house on Dec. 5, 2013 At the Bedouin village of Umm Al-Hiran, Israel. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
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A woman working on her wooden weaving loom in the countryside of Bhutan. (Andrew Eio/Getty Images)
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10
Mandy Diehr, employee of the Landgut Pretschen farm, checks the maturity of chicory plants on Jan. 2, 2014 in Pretschen, eastern Germany. (PATRICK PLEUL/AFP/Getty Images)
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Students in the nutrition technology department working on acid base volumetric analysis at the Beuth technical college on Oct. 31, 2013 in Berlin, Germany. (Thomas Koehler/Photothek via Getty Images)
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A female engineer hand-builds a M157 5.5L V8 bi-turbo engine at the Mercedes-AMG engine production factory in Affalterbach, Germany. (Tim Graham/Getty Images)
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13
An Akha Hilltribe woman picks Oolong #17 tea leaves during a harvest at the Suwirun Tea farm in the hills outside of Chaing Rai Nov. 11, 2012 in Chiang Rai, Thailand. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
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Portrait of American artist and illustrator Tara McPherson in her studio in New York, on Aug. 24, 2013. (Joby Sessions/Computer Arts Magazine/Getty Images)
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A Cuban woman works in the H. Upmann cigar factory on Feb. 26, 2015 in Havana, Cuba. (Sven Creutzmann/Mambo Photo/Getty Images)
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16
Liu Shujian, a 90-year-old lady, continues her electro welding work at Wanshousi Street on Dec. 5, 2014 in Shenyang, Liaoning province of China. (ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)
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A woman works at a plant of porcelain manufacturing society JL Coquet in Saint-Leonard-de-Noblat near Limoges, France on July 5, 2013. (MEHDI FEDOUACH/AFP/Getty Images)
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Batik craftswomen apply melted wax to fine cotton textiles to produce characteristic figurative designs at a workshop in Solo city in Central Java, Indonesia on June 29, 2009. (ROMEO GACAD/AFP/Getty Images)
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19
Indian actress Vemi Rephung from Nagaland (C) takes a break during the shooting of a song sequence on the sets of the forthcoming Bollywood movie - "Go Goa Gone" at Filmcity in Mumbai on April 8, 2013. (INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images)
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Women working in a ginger and spice factory, selecting ginger roots in the Fort Cochin area on Nov. 23, 2011 in Cochin, Kerala, India. (EyesWideOpen/Getty Images)
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A woman distributes salt in Baie des Moustiques, Port de Paix in Haiti on April 3, 2014. (HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images)
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22
Palestinian woman Amal Abu-Rqayiq works at her small carpentry work-shop in the Nusseirat refugee camp in the Gaza City, Gaza on March 8, 2014. Amal is a 40-year-old divorcee and working in a male-dominated profession to help raise a daughter with special needs. (Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
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A young African woman at work in the fields, watering crops just outside Bangui pictured on March 13, 2014 near Bangui, Central African Republic. (Thomas Koehler/Photothek/Getty Images)
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Workers handle rubber sheets as they pass through a rubber sheet washing machine at the Thai Hua Rubber Pcl factory in Samnuktong, Rayong province, Thailand, on Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2014. (Dario Pignatelli/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
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25
An employee of the Lemaitre Demeestere company works with a linen loom on April 16, 2013 in Halluin, northern France. (PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images)
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An employee stands in front of bottles at a winery in Tbilisi on Feb. 11, 2013. (VANO SHLAMOV/AFP/Getty Images)
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Women taking part in a cash for work program run by the French non-governmental organization Action Against Hunger to build dikes to hold water pose on March 21, 2012 near the village of Palboa, 300 kms northeast of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. (RAPHAEL DE BENGY/AFP/Getty Images)
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28
Day laborers carry bananas during a harvest in a field in the district of Burhanpur, Madhya Pradesh, India, on Friday, Oct. 19, 2012. (Sanjit Das/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
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Cristina Isidro Salazar (left) and Felicitas Contreras Santiago repair their truck so they can deliver wood to construction sites around town on Oct. 30, 2006 in the town of San Pablo Huixtepec, Mexico. (Dana Romanoff/Getty Images)
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An Indian woman works collecting salt in the salt pans near Dhrangadhra, Gujarat. (Malcolm Chapman/Getty Images)
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31
Mahboubeh Khoshsolat, one of the only women's fire and rescue units in the Middle East, slides down the fire pole at Fire Station No. 9 Oct. 5, 2005 in the city of Karaj, west of the Iranian capital Tehran. (Scott Peterson/Getty Images)
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Women pose on a shea butter production line for the French cosmetics company L'Occitane in Leo, south-central Burkina Faso, on Jan. 24, 2014. (LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images)
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Photo taken on January 22, 2014, shows women working on a carpet in a tiny factory in Kostandovo, a small village in Bulgaria's southern Rhodope mountains. (DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP/Getty Images)
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34
A Pakistani woman potter gives the final touches to earthen pots at a workshop on the outskirts of Lahore on June 9, 2011. (Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images)
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A picture taken on July 8, 2013 shows a woman working on a wind turbine at a plant of Gamesa in the Northern Spanish village of Aoiz, Navarra province. (RAFA RIVAS/AFP/Getty Images)
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An Iraqi woman works to collect salt from a water course near Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, Iraq. Wednesday, March 25, 2009. (Alaa al-Marjani/AP)
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37
Getty
Bedouin shop owner, Farawna Nasra Abu Adjin, 50, fashions a pillow by hand in her workshop started with a micro-finance loan from the Sawa Group, in the southern Israeli Bedouin city of Rahat on Aug. 6, 2008
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DIMITAR DILKOFF via Getty Images
This picture taken on January 22, 2014 shows women working on a carpet in a tiny factory in Kostandovo, a small village in Bulgaria's southern Rhodope mountains. (DIMITAR DILKOFF via Getty Images)
39
Sayed Khodaberdi Sadat/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
First woman taxi driver of Afghanistan Sara Bahai works for the women who aren't allowed to use taxis without their first degree men relatives. Balkh, Afghanistan, August 23, 2014. (Photo by Sayed Khodaberdi Sadat/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
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