It started with a tweet.
Janine Hendry, a 58-year-old Melbourne academic, designer, entrepreneur and mother pondered on Twitter how many “extremely disgruntled” women it would take to link arms around Parliament House and stand in silent protest against discrimination and alleged sexual abuse in the nation’s Parliament.
Ms Hendry said her tweet was sparked by the government’s handling of the alleged rape of former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins, the disturbing testimonies of harassment and assault from former schoolgirls collected by Chanel Contos, who is petitioning for consent to be taught earlier in schools, and the historical rape allegation against Attorney-General Christian Porter. Mr Porter denies the allegation.
A tweet from academic, designer and mother Janine Hendry formed the spark for protest marches across the country.Credit:Simon Schluter
“It was a visceral anger … just this growing frustration and sense amongst my followers and friends this is outrageous, we have had enough,” Ms Hendry says.
Within two hours she had a very precise response from “some lovely person”. If there were two people per metre, they tweeted, it would take 3770 people.
“Ok, thanks, now to find 4000 angry women and their supporters,” Ms Hendry responded.
This turned out not to be difficult.
Ms Hendry created a Facebook page to give people a space to direct their anger and organise the event. “I thought at best it would be me and and seven of my mates standing outside Parliament with our little placards,” she said.
But in the space of two weeks the Facebook page has more than 28,000 members.
More than 40 protest marches – known as Women’s March 4 Justice – are planned nationwide when Parliament resumes on Monday, March 15.
Marches are planned in Melbourne, Sydney and other major cities, plus country towns including Toowoomba, Bunbury, Wollongong, Ballarat and Cairns.
“Within three days I put together this amazing team of women in PR, strategy, law, socials and it’s just grown from there,” Ms Hendry said.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions has endorsed the marches, which are attracting international media attention. Australian TV presenter Julia Zemiro will MC the Canberra protest.
Marque Lawyers tweeted they would be at the Sydney march “en masse”. Former federal MP Julia Banks, who quit the Liberals after saying she had been badly bullied by colleagues, also promoted the marches on Twitter as did independent MP Zali Steggall.
Employment lawyer Josh Bornstein tweeted he would be marching for justice “because sometimes those with all the power don’t want to share it”.
Ms Hendry said the speakers are still being confirmed but will be a diverse line-up from different backgrounds. Author and political commentator Jamila Rizvi, the chief creative officer of Nine Network’s Future Women, will be among the speakers at the protest march in Melbourne.
Protesters will be asked to wear black clothes and face masks to be COVID-safe.
“I think that this is a really pivotal moment in time,” Ms Hendry said. “One of my team shared with me a quote from Lenin: ‘There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen’. And we are in that space of weeks.”
Julia Zemiro will MC the Canberra march.Credit:Edwina Pickles
Zemiro said she wanted to help after being impressed by the courage of young women including Ms Higgins and Australian of the Year Grace Tame, a sexual abuse survivor.
“I’ve been to many marches all my life from uni onwards, and I sometimes feel that marches are one of the few ways we have left to physically show media, politicians that we care enough to get on the bus to come to Canberra, we care enough to leave work at lunchtime and take to the streets.”
Zemiro recalls standing at a bus stop when she was 14 and a man coming up and saying “Do you want a f—?”
“I was so shocked by the whole thing, by the violence of the word and the intention behind it. It [harassment] starts then, let alone where it will come later. I just want women to be able to go about their day, to live, work, love, in safety.”
Zemiro believes protesters holding hands around Parliament House will be a powerful image and symbol that will be seen across the world.
”We’re surrounding the house that runs the country and it’s our job as women to remind people in that house that we are worth just as much as men,” Zemiro said.
“We don’t want to be worried about going to work.”
The Women’s March 4 justice will present a petition to Parliament demanding action on gendered violence.
The petition, which is addressed to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, makes 10 demands.
It requests four immediate actions:
- Independent investigations into all cases of gendered violence.
- Fully implementing the 55 recommendations in the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Respect@Work report of the National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces 2020.
- Lifting public funding for gendered violence prevention.
- A federal Gender Equality Act.
Gender Equity Victoria chief executive Tanja Kovac said one demand had already been met with Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins asked to lead an independent inquiry into Federal Parliament’s workplace culture.
Ms Kovac said she had long believed it was only a matter of time before Australia reached a tipping point.
She said while the recent allegations of sexual abuse were the straw that broke the camel’s back, anger had been fuelled by the cumulative effect of a decade of gendered incidents connected to Parliament.
“This is going back since ‘Ditch the witch Gillard is a bitch’ days and then every single slight that has taken place in that Parliament that’s had a gendered aspect to it over the last decade and a bit. And then, to top it off, women have carried a huge economic burden of COVID-19.”
Ms Kovac said not to expect the “usual suspects” at the marches. “There’s some solid madness about this across a range of different women’s experiences and cultural backgrounds. We are very, very tired and fed up.”
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