Women and animal advocacy

Women have played a central role in animal advocacy since the 19th century.  The animal advocacy movement – embracing animal rights, animal welfare, and anti-vivisectionism – has been disproportionately initiated and led by women, particularly in the United Kingdom.  Women are more likely to support animal rights than men.  A 1996 study of adolescents by Linda Pifer suggested that factors that may partially explain this discrepancy include attitudes towards feminism and science, scientific literacy, and the presence of a greater emphasis on "nurturance or compassion" amongst women.  Although vegetarianism does not necessarily imply animal advocacy, a 1992 market research study conducted by the Yankelovich research organization concluded that "of the 12.4 million people [in the US] who call themselves vegetarian, 68% are female, while only 32% are male". 

History

In 1392 Eleanor of Arborea, Queen (Juighissa) and national heroine of Sardinia, under the jurisdiction conferred by the Carta de Logu became the first ruler in history to grant protection to hawk and falcon nests against illegal hunters.  Eleonora's falcon (Falco eleonorae) was later named after her.  

Women and animals were often considered equally irrational and inferior in the past.  When the British author Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, British philosopher Thomas Taylor responded anonymously in the same year with A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, in which he claimed that arguments for the oppression or liberation of women applied equally well to animals, intending it as a reductio ad absurdum of Wollstonecraft's position. 

Many of the major British animal advocacy groups founded in the late 1800s and early 1900s, all regarded as radical in their time, were founded by women, including the Battersea Dogs' Home (Mary Tealby, 1860), the National Anti-Vivisection Society (Frances Power Cobbe, from Ireland, 1875; it is the world’s first anti-vivisection organization), the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (Frances Power Cobbe, from Ireland, 1898), and the British Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society (Lizzy Lind af Hageby, from Sweden, and Nina Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton, 1903.) 

In 1867 the American philanthropist Caroline Earle White co-founded the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; she also founded its women's branch in 1869.  The women's branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, also known as the Women’s Humane Society and the Women’s Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or WPSPCA, opened America’s first animal shelter in 1869.  WPSPCA successfully passed the Twenty-eight Hour Law in 1871, a mandate that required railway companies to provide facilities to feed, water and rest animals in transit every 28 hours.  Immediately WPSPCA sent agents to assess the railways’ adherence and prosecute any offenders.  In 1896 the Reading Railroad was charged with transporting a shipment of horses for 52 hours without food or water.  The railroad was found guilty and the Reading officials were charged $200, setting an important precedent.  White viewed the 28-hour law as the crowning achievement of her life.  White also founded the American Anti-Vivisection Society in 1883.  In 1909 WPSCA, along with other city humanitarians, secured legislation forbidding the sale or purchase of disabled work horses. 

In 1877 Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, the first English novel to be written from the perspective of a non-human animal, spurred concern for the welfare of horses. 

In 1880, the English feminist Anna Kingsford became one of the first English women to graduate in medicine, after studying for her degree in Paris, and the only student at the time to do so without having experimented on animals.  She published The Perfect Way in Diet (1881), advocating vegetarianism, and was also vocal in her opposition to animal experiments. 

British political scientist Robert Garner writes that 70 percent of the membership of the Victoria Street Society (one of the anti-vivisection groups founded by Frances Power Cobbe; it was founded in 1875) were women, as were 70 percent of the membership of the British Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1900. 

The British Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society came to widespread attention during the Brown Dog affair (1903–1910), which began when Lizzy Lind af Hageby infiltrated the vivisection in University College London of a brown terrier dog.  The subsequent description of the experiment in her book, The Shambles of Science (1903) – in which she wrote that the dog had been conscious throughout and in pain – led to a protracted scandal and a libel case, which the accused researcher won.  The affair however continued for several years, making a name both for Lind af Hageby and for the society.  Australian writer and academic Coral Lansbury writes that the suffragist movement in the United Kingdom became closely linked with the anti-vivisection movement.  Writing about the Brown Dog affair, she argues that the iconography of vivisection struck a chord with women.  The vivisected dog muzzled and strapped to the operating board, she argues, was a symbolic reminder of the suffragette on hunger strike restrained and force-fed in Brixton Prison, as well as women strapped into the gynaecologist's chair by their male doctors, for childbirth, for sterilization, as a cure for "hysteria", and as objects of study by male medical students. 

The Vegan Society, a registered charity and the oldest vegan society in the world, was founded in the United Kingdom in November 1944 by Dorothy Watson and her husband Donald Watson, along with four friends - Elsie Shrigley, Fay K. Henderson and her husband G.A. Henderson among them.  The founding of the Vegan Society is celebrated annually on 1 November, World Vegan Day.  The day was established in 1994 by Louise Wallis, the then President and Chair.  However, the founding of the Vegan Society is thought to have been either 5 or 12 November 1944. 

The first vegan society in the United States was founded in 1948 by Catherine Nimmo and Rubin Abramowitz in California, who distributed Donald Watson's newsletter. 

The earliest documented practice of trap-neuter-return was in the 1950s, led by animal activist Ruth Plant in the U.K.

In 1951, the Animal Welfare Institute was founded by Christine Stevens. 

On November 22, 1954, the Humane Society of the United States was founded by Marcia Glaser, Helen Jones, and two men. 

In 1962 the Animal Welfare Board of India was founded by Rukmini Devi Arundale. 

In 1964 the British author Ruth Harrison published Animal Machines, an influential critique of factory farming, and on October 10, 1965, the British novelist Brigid Brophy had an article, "The Rights of Animals", published in The Sunday Times.  Brophy wrote:

The relationship of homo sapiens to the other animals is one of unremitting exploitation.  We employ their work; we eat and wear them.  We exploit them to serve our superstitions: whereas we used to sacrifice them to our gods and tear out their entrails in order to foresee the future, we now sacrifice them to science, and experiment on their entrail in the hope—or on the mere offchance—that we might thereby see a little more clearly into the present ... To us it seems incredible that the Greek philosophers should have scanned so deeply into right and wrong and yet never noticed the immorality of slavery.  Perhaps 3000 years from now it will seem equally incredible that we do not notice the immorality of our own oppression of animals.  

British political scientist Robert Garner writes that Ruth Harrison's book and Brigid Brophy's article led to an explosion of interest in the relationship between humans and nonhumans.  In particular, Brophy's article was discovered in or around 1969 by a group of postgraduate philosophy students at the University of Oxford, Roslind and Stanley Godlovitch (wife and husband from Canada), John Harris, and David Wood, now known as the Oxford Group.  They decided to put together a symposium to discuss the theory of animal rights.  Around the same time, the British writer Richard D. Ryder wrote several letters to The Daily Telegraph criticizing animal experimentation; these letters were seen by Brophy, who put Ryder in touch with the Godlovitches and Harris.  Harrison, Brophy, and Ryder subsequently became contributors to the Godlovitches' symposium, which was published in 1971 as Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans (edited by Roslind and Stanley Godlovitch and John Harris). 

In the mid-1960s, English former model Celia Hammond gained publicity for her trap-neuter-return work "at a time when euthanasia of feral cats was considered the only option."  Hammond "fought many battles with local authorities, hospitals, environmental health departments" but stated that she succeeded over the years in showing that control "could be achieved by neutering and not killing."  In 1986 she founded the Celia Hammond Animal Trust with the aim of opening a low-cost neutering clinic to control the feral animal population.  The first of these clinics opened in Lewisham in 1995, and a second opened in Canning Town in 1999.  The Celia Hammond Animal Trust also runs a sanctuary in Brede, East Sussex, for animals which need new homes.  In addition to neutering animals, the clinics (and sanctuary) also help to rescue and rehome animals, and now find homes for thousands of cats each year. 

In 1973 Dr. Shirley McGreal founded the International Primate Protection League in Thailand. 

In 1980 the English-born British/American animal rights activist Ingrid Newkirk co-founded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. 

Also in 1980 was the first Action for Life conference for animal rights, which was attended by a number of pioneers in the animal rights movement, including Ingrid Newkirk.  

In 1981 Feminists for Animal Rights was founded in California; it became a nationwide organization in the following years and was active nationwide for over two decades, but is now defunct. 

In 1984 Virginia McKenna OBE founded the Born Free Foundation together with her husband Bill Travers OBE and their son Will Travers OBE.   The Born Free Foundation is a dynamic international wildlife charity.  Born Free takes action worldwide to save lives, stop suffering and protect species in the wild.  

A breakaway group from the Vegan Society, the Movement for Compassionate Living, was founded in 1984 by the former Vegan Society Secretary Kathleen Jannaway and her husband Jack.  The Movement for Compassionate Living promotes veganism and sustainable living. 

In 1986, Lorri Houston co-founded Farm Sanctuary, America's first shelter for farm animals. 

In 1990 the American author Carol J. Adams published her influential book The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory, which discusses the connections between feminism and vegetarianism and patriarchy and meat eating, historically and through the reading of literary texts. 

Also in 1990, during the March for Animals in Washington, D.C. – the largest animal rights demonstration held until then in the United States – most of the participants were women, but most of the platform speakers were men. 

In 1992 People for Animals (PFA), also known as People for Animals India, India's largest animal welfare organization, was founded by Maneka Gandhi, who later became its chairperson. 

In 1994 Louise Wallis, then President and Chair of the Vegan Society, founded World Vegan Day to commemorate the society's 50th anniversary.  Vegans around the world now join together to celebrate animal rights every World Vegan Day, held annually on November 1.  However, the actual founding of the Vegan Society is thought to have been either 5 or 12 November 1944. 

In 1998 Animals Asia was founded by Jill Robinson MBE; it works to end the bear bile trade in Asia.  The charity has two bear sanctuaries in China and Vietnam and has rescued over 500 bears.  It also works to end the trade in cats and dogs as food in China and Vietnam, and campaigns for the end of abusive captive animal practices in safari parks and zoos in Asia. 

In 2006 in the Netherlands, Marianne Thieme and Esther Ouwehand were elected to parliament representing the Party for Animals. 

In 2015, Jo-Anne McArthur (We Animals) and Keri Cronin (Department of Visual Arts, Brock University), launched The Unbound Project, a multimedia and book project that celebrates the women who have been at the forefront of animal advocacy around the globe. 

Women have also featured prominently in actions carried out in the name of the Animal Liberation Front and the Hunt Saboteurs Association. 

References

Further reading
Adams, Carol J. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. ( 1990)
Adams, Carol J. and Donovan, Josephine.  The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics: A Reader. ( 2007)
Donovan, Josephine. " Animal Rights and Feminist Theory," Signs, Vol.  15, No.  2 (Winter, 1990), pp.  350–375. 
Feminists for Animal Rights
Kean, Hilda (1995). " The 'Smooth Cool Men of Science': The Feminist and Socialist Response to Vivisection", History Workshop Journal, 40: 16–38. 
Kemmerer, Lisa A. (editor).  Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice. ( 2011)
Lansbury, Coral.  The Old Brown Dog: Women, Workers, and Vivisection in Edwardian England. ( 1985)

Category:Animal rights
Category:Women in society