Women around the world will again return to the streets marking one year after millions marched to protest President Donald Trump's election, with a new goal - electing more women's rights advocates.
Mr Trump's perceived misogynist comments and policies rolling back birth control and equal pay efforts have propelled many women into activism for the first time, campaigners said, pointing to the success of social media campaigns against sexual harassment.
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"I think that these are natural outgrowths of that outpouring of energy and they reflect some of the issues of the people who marched," Vanessa Wruble, head of March On, one group of organisers, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Some 5 million women around the world staged demonstrations on January 21 last year, the day after Mr Trump's inauguration, many wearing pink "pussy hats" in reference to the president's boast about grabbing women's genitals.
"It felt like it was a huge signal to Trump's administration," said Elissar Harati, 29, who marched last year in Washington and will take to the streets again on Saturday.
Multiple accusations of sexual misconduct against male actors, filmmakers and agents in Hollywood, and the #MeToo and #TimesUp campaigns against sexual harassment, have awoken her to broader issues like equal pay and maternity leave, she said.
Tens of thousands of people have registered their intentions on social media to join rallies on Saturday and Sunday, with major events planned in New York and Los Angeles, as well as Britain, Nigeria and Japan.
But turnout is unlikely to equal 2017's, organisers said.
"The women's march of last year was a historical moment that we're not trying to replicate," said Bob Bland, who helped organise the 2017 march on Washington, which appeared to draw larger crowds than Trump's swearing-in at the US Capitol.
Marchers will kick off a voter registration campaign in Las Vegas and other swing states held by Republicans - where neither political party holds a predictable lead - ahead of a possible backlash against Mr Trump in November's midterm elections.
Reuters
