The iconic pink hat of past International Women’s Days seemed less popular than keffiyehs and anti-warn signage at Sunday’s march in Boston.

Although there were chants and calls for transwomen’s rights and reproductive access, many speakers and attendees focused attention on the war in Iran, which is entering its second week.

“I don’t know who needs to hear this, but war is bad for women,” Iranian-American activist Bahar Sharafi said to the crowd. “Civil wars, state collapse, conflict, chaos and the breakdown of the rule of law are bad for women. When men run around with guns, it is bad for women.”

Sharafi talked about the death of 150 people at a girls school right after the start of the fighting last week.

Amrita Dani, a teacher in a Boston public school, started a chant, “Money for the people’s needs, not the U.S. war machine.”

Dani talked about the struggles Americans are facing at home, including the high cost of gas, utilities, and healthcare, arguing that money spent on the war in Iran should be focused back in the United States.

The money “should be going to fund people’s needs right here in our communities, in Massachusetts and across the country,” she said, “It shouldn’t be going to bomb poor people in other countries.”

Kathy Roberts and Cathy Hoffman, two attendees, told the Herald about the connection they see between the women and peace movement.

“There are women in Iran,” Roberts said. “There are women everywhere.”

As a mother and grandmother, she worries a lot about how this war will unfold under Trump’s leadership, which she doesn’t trust.

“We are opposed to this megalomaniac,” Hoffman said.

“Our notion of feminism,” she added, “is about changing systems of male domination and power.”

Hoffman said that she’s been protesting for about five decades.

“Seven decades for me,” Roberts added.

One speaker, activist Amanda McGonigle, quoted First Lady Abigail Adams’ famous line to her husband, written almost 250 years ago to the day: “Remember the ladies… Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion.”

“We are the heirs of women who marched, who organized, who fought, who bled, who died, for the rights that we have today,” McGonigle said to the crowd while standing next her daughter also named Abigail, “and we will not let those rights be taken away.”

The rally and march held on the Common and then through Boston Public Garden largely went smoothly.

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At the end of the rally, a counter-protester in a black “Make America Great Again” hat and a jacket covered in police patches started shouting through her own megaphone, “Trump is your daddy.”

While she gave the Women’s March attendees the finger, several shouted back at her:

“Go home!”

“You’re fighting against your rights!”

Demonstrators march during Sunday’s International Women’s day rally on Boston Common. (Libby O’Neill/Boston Herald)