When Janine Hendry decided to stage a protest against sexism, misogyny and alleged sexual misconduct in Australia’s parliament, she thought it would be just her and a few friends waving placards outside Parliament House.
But that was a couple of weeks ago. Today her March4Justice movement has 27,000 followers on Facebook and close to 8,000 on Twitter.
On Monday thousands of them will dress as requested – head-to-toe in black – and stage 36 protests across Australia.
Carol Shipard, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, will be among them at a protest she has helped organise in the northern New South Wales city of Lismore.
For her, the government’s reaction to revelations about the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins in a federal minister’s office in 2019 (the subject of an ongoing police investigation), and the separate rape allegation against the attorney general, Christian Porter, which he adamantly denies, felt like “a punch in the guts”.
“As a survivor, it felt like nothing was being addressed,” she says. “I had to channel that energy into something positive and try to push for change.
“This closing of ranks, it’s got to stop. The only answer I can see is to break the silence, take away the secrecy.”
On the other side of the country, in the port city of Bunbury in Western Australia, Aoife McGreal was already planning her own protest when she heard about March4Justice and decided to join it.
In the wake of the allegations she also felt compelled to act, as though women across Australia had reached some kind of “tipping point”.
“I feel like every woman has a story. Whether it’s workplace harassment, or abuse in the home, or on the street, even. It’s time for women to speak up. I feel like it’s a time of reckoning for Australia.”
Hendry seems surprised and yet somehow, not, about the juggernaut March4Justice has become.
“It started out with me thinking me and my, you know, seven best friends, we’ll get some placards and stand outside Parliament House, and that’s what it would amount to,” she tells Guardian Australia. “Yes, my seven best friends will still be there [on Monday] but I think we’re going to have a couple of others along for the ride.
“This is women from all walks of life, from city, from country, from different cultural backgrounds, coming together to express their anger and sheer frustration at what is happening out there.”
She says there’s a simmering anger, and has been for a long time, about the treatment of women in this day and age. She speaks of the “hypocrisy” of Barnaby Joyce espousing family values while having an extramarital affair with a staffer, of former high court justice Dyson Heydon, who denies being a sexual harasser of young associates despite an inquiry that found he was. And then there are the revelations out of Canberra in the past few weeks.
Among the things she finds most troubling about the Higgins matter is that, according to the prime minister, none of his ministers or staffers who knew about the alleged assault immediately told him about it.
“Why do they think the women of Australia deserve to be treated in such a way, by them not thinking that an [alleged] sexual assault in our leading lawmaking institution is not worthy of telling the boss?” Hendry says.
The single mother from Melbourne, who runs a design consultancy firm, doesn’t know how many supporters will turn out across the country on Monday but says all events will be Covid-safe.
In Canberra, where the largest crowd is expected, an exemption has been sought from Covid rules limiting outdoor events to 1,000.
Hendry has had offers from politicians who want to speak but she’s told them no, that the events must be apolitical and focused on change, regardless of political allegiances.
In Lismore, Shipard applauds that approach: “This is not about head-hunting politicians. This is about getting 50% of women in politics, it’s about changing procedures and make it impossible – without consequence – to ignore this stuff.
“It’s about getting it down very clearly – here’s the ladder, this is what you do, this is who you contact, and the buck stops at the very top.”
Here’s a list of capital city March4Justice protests. All will begin at 12 noon local time on Monday 15 March, except for Perth, which will take place a day earlier:
Canberra: Parliament House
Sydney: Sydney Town Hall
Melbourne: The State Library
Brisbane: King George Square
Adelaide: Victoria Square
Hobart: Parliament House lawn
Darwin: Raintree Park
Perth: Starting at Forrest Place in the city centre from 11am on Sunday