Call out to men to back 'No More' Bendigo rally against gender violence

"We would welcome as much support on the day as possible," Melissa Asta said. "And it's important that we have support from men.

"If we're going to make a difference, we need men's voices.

"Men need to be having these conversations among themselves."

A core group of around a dozen local women have taken on the task of staging the Bendigo edition of a national rally calling for action in the wake of an "alarming surge" in incidents of male violence against women.

These include the deaths of the victims of the Bondi junction stabbings, of childcare worker Molly Ticehurst in NSW, of Rebecca Young, Samantha Murphy and Hannah McGuire in Ballarat, of Emma Bates in Cobram this week and of mother of four Logee Osias in Bendigo last year.

"A lot of us work in mental health," Ms Asta said. "And some of us have also experienced sexual violence or family violence.

"But mostly it's just that we've lost 11 women to violence this month and 31 this year and we're getting crickets from Canberra. We felt like we couldn't be silent any more.

"At the rate that women are dying it's a national emergency and we need it to be declared as such."

Spearheaded by NSW-based Indigenous-led group What Were You Wearing? the 'No More' rallies taking place around the country this weekend are aimed at raising awareness and demanding that politicians and others in a position to make change take action.

According to Ms Asta, five demands will be declared at the 11am Rosalind Park rally on Sunday, which the CEOs of Bendigo's Centre for Non Violence and Centre Against Sexual Assault-Central Victoria are set to speak at.

A Facebook event - No More Bendigo - set up for the rally had at last count clocked up 150 expressions of interest, she said.

Meanwhile, a Bendigo research project looking at sexual assault and violence that was launched last week found rural and regional communities had a crucial part to play in stopping these crimes from continuing.