Five years after tens of thousands of women marched across Australia demanding action on gendered violence, the country has changed its language and policies. But the most brutal statistic – women killed by current or former partners – has not declined.

Five years ago, tens of thousands of women gathered outside Australia’s Parliament House and across the country in what became the largest mobilisation of women in Australian history.

The March 4 Justice movement grew rapidly, and what unfolded in March 2021 quickly became something far larger than a single protest.

The marches were sparked by the allegation that Brittany Higgins had been raped inside Parliament House. But they were never only about one woman or one incident.

Higgins’ story cracked something open. It exposed what women across the country already knew. Power, silence and violence against women were not confined to private spaces. They existed within the institutions that govern our national life.

Women marched because they were tired of watching powerful men close ranks.

They marched because they were tired of systems that protected perpetrators while women carried the consequences.

They marched because the stories kept coming.

In the weeks leading up to the marches, thousands of women began sharing their experiences of harassment, assault and abuse. The scale of those testimonies made something impossible to deny. The problem was not isolated. It was structural.

For decades, women had been speaking about violence. In 2021, the country was finally forced to listen.

At the time, the country was also witnessing political responses that appeared more concerned with managing reputational damage than confronting the deeper problem. What many women saw was not simply a single allegation inside Parliament House, but a political culture that struggled to recognise the scale of gendered violence or the power structures that allowed it to persist.

Five years on, the obvious question remains.

What has actually changed?

In some respects, quite a lot.

March 4 Justice forced gendered violence into the centre of the national political conversation. Governments that had long treated violence against women as a marginal social issue were suddenly confronted by a national reckoning.

Resources began to flow into the sector. Domestic violence services received increased funding. National plans were revised. Police forces expanded training around coercive control. Research institutions began examining the deeper drivers of gendered violence.

The language shifted as well. Terms such as coercive control, gendered violence and systemic inequality moved from activist spaces into the language of public policy.

In bureaucratic terms, the machinery began to move.

But funding announcements and policy frameworks are not the same as safety.

The most brutal statistic refuses to move in the direction we hoped.

Women in Australia continue to be killed by current or former partners at a horrifying rate.

More than one woman a week is murdered by a man she once loved. In some years, the number is closer to two.

In recent periods, the numbers have not declined; they have increased.

If more than one Australian woman a week were dying from any other preventable cause, it would be declared a national emergency. When the victims are women killed by men they know, the response remains slower, quieter and more cautious.

Five years after the largest women’s march in Australian history, the crisis that drove those marches remains stubbornly intact.

Which raises a confronting question.

What are we still getting wrong?

Part of the problem is that Australia continues to treat violence against women primarily as a service response rather than a structural one.

We fund crisis accommodation, counselling services and police responses. All of these are necessary. The domestic violence sector has been chronically under-resourced for decades, and the funding increases that followed 2021 have undoubtedly helped.

But crisis services operate downstream.

They respond after the violence has already occurred.

What we have not addressed with the same seriousness are the structural drivers of that violence. Economic inequality. Housing insecurity. Cultural attitudes about male entitlement. The persistent minimisation of coercive control. A justice system that many women still struggle to trust.

Too often, violence against women is still treated as a series of tragic individual incidents rather than what it is; a systemic failure.

Another problem is political attention span.

Moments of crisis produce headlines and policy announcements. But structural change requires sustained political will over decades. Governments change. Priorities shift. Momentum fades. National outrage slowly dissolves into bureaucratic process.

Meanwhile, the violence continues.

There is also a tendency to soften the language around the issue.

Gendered violence is often discussed in careful and technical terms. But the reality is not technical.

Women are being murdered by men they once shared homes with. Children are growing up in houses shaped by fear. Survivors are navigating systems that can retraumatise them. Frontline services remain stretched.

This is not simply a policing problem or a welfare problem.

It is a problem of power.

Gendered violence sits within the structures of our society. It sits in economic inequality, in cultural norms about masculinity and entitlement, and in institutions that still struggle to respond when women speak.

Five years after March 4 Justice, the issue has greater visibility, and the sector has more resources than it once did.

That matters.

But visibility is not transformation.

The women who stepped into the streets in 2021 did not march for better language, more reports or another round of carefully worded commitments.

They marched because they wanted something very simple.

They wanted women to stop dying.

Five years later, that remains the only measure that matters.

Until the number of women being killed begins to fall, every anniversary of March 4 Justice will carry the same truth.

Australia heard the marches.

But the killing has not stopped.