How a moment of despair turned into a movement

It all started with a tweet.

In a moment of despair over allegations of systematic sexual assault and harassment in parliament, Melbourne academic Janine Hendry asked her Twitter followers how many “extremely disgruntled” women it would take to surround the building in silent protest.

Ms Hendry told AAP: “I sent the tweet and within five minutes someone messaged me saying we’d need about 3,800… so I rounded it up to 4,000 and thought let’s try it.”

“Within 24 hours there were 27,000 people in the Facebook group I created to coordinate everything, and that’s when I thought: ‘Okay, women are really angry.'”

Sunday marks five years since the historic March 4 Justice, when an estimated 150,000 people, mostly women, marched across the country to demand leaders take action against gender-based violence.

The 2021 action was launched in response to sexual assault allegations in parliament by former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins and a historic rape case allegedly involving then attorney-general Christian Porter, who has vehemently denied it.

Public statements and testimonies about harassment and assault of female students collected by consent advocate Chanel Contos also became a catalyst for the rallies.

Since then, Ms Contos has successfully campaigned for compulsory consent education in Australian schools through her organization Teach Us Consent.

More than 40 marches were held across the country, including a large rally in front of the Houses of Parliament.

“This was the largest women’s march in Australian history and had a tremendous impact… women have had enough,” Ms Hendry says.

“That’s what brought the orange movement into parliament, I have no doubt it was the final nail in the coffin of the Morrison government… March 4 Justice really drew a line in the sand.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and many in the coalition government subsequently chose not to attend the Canberra march.

Mr Morrison was later widely criticized for suggesting that the thousands of women marching for justice should be thankful they were not shot.

He made his statements in parliament by comparing the rallies to violent protests in Myanmar.

Later, opposition leader Anthony Albanese joined the protesters in Canberra, as did many independent and Green MPs along with his shadow cabinet.

Before the march, Ms Hendry recalls working 18 hours a day and coming into contact with journalists from around the world.

“Morrison didn’t seem to care about women, and I asked him what was the one thing that would make him stand up and realize that it was shame and embarrassment on a global scale,” she says.

“We were in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, the BBC, the Irish Times… we put pressure on the global level and then took it to the national and local level.”

While Parliament has since introduced strategies to address and reduce harassment within the building, rates of violence against women continue to trouble Ms Hendry.

“We’re making small changes to equality but we’re not seeing the impact on the rates of violence against women (and) that’s something I look at with great sadness,” he says.

“We need structural and systemic reform, but we also need to change the narrative around femicide.

“We know that the Albanian government is pouring large amounts of money into the sector to support women’s programs, but we are still not moving the needle.”

The Australian Femicide Monitor reported that 14 women have died as a result of violence so far in 2026, 79 women will be killed in 2025 and 106 women will be killed in 2024.

Ms Hendry says more needs to be done to ensure women have a place at the decision-making table, rather than continuing to belittle their experiences.

“The biggest takeaways from many of the women who came to the march were that their voices were being heard for the first time in their lives and that their experiences mattered,” she continues.

“When we start listening to the judicial system, the healthcare system, the education system, and implement reforms around those, that’s when we’ll start to see real change.”

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