Wearing black and holding signs reading “enough is enough”, thousands took to the streets across Australia on Monday to protest violence and discrimination against women, as a reckoning in the country’s halls of power sparked by multiple accusations of rape continued to grow.

The marches in at least 40 cities represented an outpouring of anger from women about a problem that has gone unaddressed for too long, said the organisers, who estimated that 110,000 people attended the demonstrations.

With the next national election potentially coming as early as August, experts say it is something that the conservative government, which has come under stinging criticism for the way it has handled the accusations, ignores at its own peril. The public anger in Australia came as thousands in London joined protests over the killing of 33-year-old Sarah Everard, who disappeared while walking home at night earlier this month.

In Australia, the message to the government was that “there are huge numbers of women around the country that have had enough, quite frankly, of their appalling response to sexual assault and harassment”, said Janine Hendry, the main organiser of the marches.