Ms Higgins said the language around sexual violence needed to improve, more strong women needed to be in the rooms when key decisions are made and the federal government needed to implement the 28 recommendations delivered in the review by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins.

"In the national conversation we have this passive, anonymous language vaguely talking about wrongs done, as if sexual violence falls out of the sky, as if it is perpetrated by no one, as if it is inflicted on no one," she said.

"Last year wasn't a march for acknowledgment. It wasn't a march for coverage. It wasn't a march for language. It was a march for justice.

"And that justice demands real change in our laws."