Women and animal advocacy
[2][3] 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.
[5] 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.
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.
[9] 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.
[15] 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.
[16] In many respects the book can be read as a guide to horse husbandry, stable management and humane training practices for colts.
[14] In 1889 in England, the Plumage League was founded by Emily Williamson, at her house, as a protest group campaigning against the use of great crested grebe and kittiwake skins and feathers in fur clothing.
[21] Also in 1889 the Fur, Fin and Feather Folk (an animal rights group) was founded in England by Eliza Phillips, Etta Lemon, Catherine Hall, Hannah Poland and others.
Women played a critical role in the organization, counting for half of its officers and serving as leaders of most of the local chapters.
[26] 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 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 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.
[36] 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.
[40] Also in the United States, Velma Bronn Johnston initiated a massive letter-writing campaign by students to Senators and other Congress members, and on September 8, 1959, the campaign resulted in the federal legislature passing Public Law 86-234, which banned the poisoning of watering holes frequented by wild equids and the use of air and land vehicles in hunting and capturing free-roaming horses for sale and slaughter.
Johnston continued her campaign, and in 1971, the 92nd United States Congress unanimously passed the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971.
[43] 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.
[47] In the mid-1960s, English former model Celia Hammond gained publicity for her trap-neuter-return work[38] "at a time when euthanasia of feral cats was considered the only option.
"[48] 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.
Born Free takes action worldwide to save lives, stop suffering and protect species in the wild.
[57] Also that year, Karen Davis founded United Poultry Concerns a non-profit animal rights organization in the United States that addresses the treatment of poultry, including chickens, ducks and turkeys, in food production, science, education, entertainment, and human companionship situations.
Women have also featured prominently in actions carried out in the name of the Animal Liberation Front and the Hunt Saboteurs Association.
