I’ve travelled the world researching patriarchy – and found it is far from inevitable | Angela Saini

Forget Barbie and pink cupcakes. Radical change is what we should fight for on International Women's Day

In 1932, 75-year-old socialist Clara Zetkin stood in Germany's Reichstag and, despite being so unsteady that she had to be carried into the building on a stretcher, managed to give a rousing speech lasting more than 40 minutes. The fight of the labouring masses," she declared, is the fight for their full liberation." She wasn't a fan of feminism (dismissing it as bourgeois), but it was Zetkin's dream that women everywhere, especially the most deprived and marginalised, might one day be free of all forms of oppression. The Nazis took power in Germany shortly after. Zetkin fled to Russia and died there.

On the day I went to see Zetkin's former home north of Berlin in Brandenburg, now a museum, there were no other visitors. Despite her iconic status in her own time, she has been largely lost to history. Her bravery is remembered usually as a footnote to the fact that she helped found what we now know as International Women's Day.

Angela Saini is a science writer, teaches at MIT and is the author of The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule