Medical professionals and academics are calling for a national law against dowry, as part of Australia's first summit looking at the impacts of the practice.

Deep (not her real name), 27, met her husband on a matrimonial website.

He was nice and her parents approved of him.

One of his attractive qualities was that unlike many Indian men, he didn't agree with dowries — gifts and money from the wife's family to the husband and his family.

They had a lavish Australian-Sikh wedding, paid for by her parents.

But a few months later, her in-laws demanded the family pay for another wedding in India.

"For one year everything was going good," she says.

"After that, the family said the marriage we did in Australia is not up to the standard… even the girl you have married, we are higher in standards."

Her parents paid $16,000 for a 1,400-guest wedding in India, and also met demands of $8,000 in gold.

Deep, who works in the medical field, says it was insulting.

"I said to my father I'm an independent girl. I don't want to marry a guy who is asking for the money. Are you selling me, are they buying what's happening? It's not a business. I'm a human being," she said

But in India, there is still a huge stigma around divorce, so they paid.

"Girls' families do every possible thing to save the wedding of their daughter," she said.

"A divorced girls' life is not normal in India.

"I belong to a small town, I belong to Punjab, they start abusing and start blaming girls."

When they returned from India, she says, her husband became abusive.

He would force her to have sex, and would tell her on a daily basis that she was worthless.

"He'd start saying to me you are a loser. You are a piece of shit."

Then he demanded that her family give them $50,000 for a house deposit.

Deep refused and he assaulted her before leaving the home.

This is an all-too-common story, according to Dr Manjula O'Connor.

The Melbourne psychiatrist has seen more than 100 cases of domestic violence, and more than 50 per cent of them are dowry-related.

"The grooms are not happy with the amount of dowry offered, it's insufficient for their needs or their wishes, as a result of which there are demands for more dowry," she said.

"When the women are refusing those demands, it is leading to domestic violence, emotional abuse much more than physical abuse, but then it becomes physical abuse, and then threats of violence.

Anti-dowry summit

Yesterday in Melbourne, Dr Manjula led the first national anti-dowry summit held by the Australasian Centre for Human Rights and Health.

It is not known exactly how widespread marriage dowries are in Australia, but Dr Manjula says it is still a common practice throughout south Asia as well as Africa and the Middle East, and can be worth 50 per cent of the entire household worth.

"The one-way gift giving right now comprises of cash, white goods, air conditioners, furniture, even money for honeymoons," she says.

"The cost of it can be multiple times an income of a family.

"My opinion is, ideally, one would like to not have any dowry at all but we know that the tradition of dowry is an ancient one, and in India, despite the laws since 1961 to ban it, it is still thriving.

"So it is not possible to ban it but what we can do is take it to a level where it is reasonable and easy for young people and their families, where the dowry is a symbolic exchange of gifts rather than massive one-way gift giving."

When marriages end, Dr Manjula says the husbands often keep the valuables.

She's calling for a federal law against dowry demands, as well as bilateral agreements between countries to police it.

"We want laws that make it a civil or a criminal offense to extort dowry," she says.

"The problem is the dowry is given in India and it is left in India with his parents… but the marriages are breaking up in Australia. So it is creating a lot of judicial kind of issues."

Culture of silence that devalues women

Dr Manjula acknowledges that creating law is only a small part of the picture.

She says educating communities both in Australia and abroad is key to removing the culture of silence around dowry, and getting rid of the expectations of men and their families.

"It lowers the value of women.

"She's measured in terms of the worth of dowry that she can bring."

Melbourne woman Deep is now separated from her husband, but her family will not let her tell anyone.

"They still want me to go back to that boy," she says.

She hopes sharing her story will empower other women to leave abusive relationships.

"I can never ever trust anybody else in my life… because in our society people are saying girls and boys are equal, but in actual we are still not equal in Indian culture."