There are many words one could use to describe the central themes of International Women's Day. Pride, perhaps, in the distance we've come since its conception, 116 years ago. Empowerment – this is a buzzword that is often thrown around, but it neatly encapsulates the idea of celebration of female strength that is at the heart of the day. And, necessarily, diversity, which would have to be pretty much inherent in any celebration that claims to represent half of the human race, and which we can see clearly in the variety of responses it has.

And from the customary Google Doodle to celebrities' tweets, from Facebook statuses to the countless events celebrating women's achievements, and from the demonstrations demanding recognition of our talents in the workplace to the history books, it's evident that most of these are made in the same spirit in which International Women's Day was originally conceived.

But there are, of course, dissenters. Every celebration of the sort attracts them: just as people of every other ethnicity become particularly concerned about their equivalent representative months during Black History Month, International Women's Day brings out the inevitable chorus of men asking "But what about International Men's Day?". In fact, a simple Google would tell you that there is one of these, on November 19th – we can probably say, then, that the real concern is not actually whether men are truly celebrated by society or not (answer: they are), but a deep-seated uneasiness with the idea of women being celebrated: fairly straightforward misogyny. Some women oppose the day for the same reason that groups such as Women Against Feminism exist: they see feminism as unnecessary and even hurtful due to its challenging of traditional social structures, although they see it more as 'treating men unfairly', fundamentally misunderstanding the reasons for and aims of the feminist movement. Few take them seriously, but although the women who contribute to these movements are evidently lucky enough not to have experienced the same misogyny that some women who are feminists have, we cannot really victimise them for believing the lie of equality between men and women that the world we live in encourages them to believe.

But there are also women who are uncomfortable with International Women's Day as it currently exists for far more thorny and valid reasons, and these reasons can be extrapolated out to apply to the whole movement of feminism. The feminist movement has often failed to include certain types of woman, perhaps most pertinently non-Western women, and many female activists fighting for gender equality have become disillusioned with it, going so far as to break away and form separate movements such as womanism. Labelling International Women's Day as a feminist day alone runs the risk of excluding these women, as well as women who do not identify as feminists due to cultural distances or internalised misogyny, and it is no more or less unacceptable to do any of this. Today is for all women.

This goes some way to explain the strange disassociation between International Women's Day and feminism – with many of the largest groups that support it opting for the arguably more neutral and less loaded term of 'gender equality' instead – and so does the fact that it actually predates feminism as the movement we recognise. However, it also feels like this disassociation goes too far the other way, or perhaps not far enough. The issue many women have with feminism is that it isn't inclusive of marginalised groups and that it doesn't fight hard enough for women who have fewer privileges than others. From its inception, International Women's Day has been about solidarity and inclusivity; it began as a socialist event to commemorate a strike held by the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, one of the biggest unions in the USA at the time, in which 15,000 women marched through New York City to demand better pay, working conditions and the right to vote.

The idea of International Women's Day as a force for real political and social change is a familiar one, and where it does in most areas still adhere to this ethos, it is evident that in some areas, International Women's Day has been 'declawed'. The distance between International Women's Day and feminism also separates their respective histories of organised activism; today becomes about celebrating women, and of course it is. But this celebration has to go hand in hand with the fight for equal rights. In many ways, celebrating women and our achievements is in itself a radical act, simply because we go without celebration so often, but we need to push this further. For example, we need to put more emphasis on LGBT+ women, women of colour and disabled women, because they are the most ignored. Most importantly, we need to accept that because we are so diverse we cannot really understand the full range of experiences that women have, but we have to support, listen to and fight for each other anyway.

For me, the key theme of International Women's Day is solidarity – between each other and between other marginalised groups – because women are members of all of these communities and we are all united by experiences of oppression. We have all come a long way, but there's still a long way to go, and we have to get there together.

In the words of the International Women's Day organisation, let's make it happen.