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.Gaarder, Emily. "The 'Gender' Question of Animal Rights: Why are Women the Majority?" , paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montreal Convention Center, August 11, 2006. 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
Pre-1800s
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.Sunstein, Cass R. The Chimps' Day in Court , The New York Times, February 20, 2000.
1800s 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.Buettinger, Craig. "Women and antivivisection in late nineteenth century America" , Journal of Social History, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Summer, 1997), pp. 857–872. 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 (the first anti-vivisection organization founded in the United States) in 1883. In 1909 WPSCA, along with other city humanitarians, secured legislation forbidding the sale or purchase of disabled work horses.
In 1875, Catherine Smithies founded the first Band of Mercy, which promoted teaching children kindness towards non-human animals and led to the Bands of Mercy movement.
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. Although the book is now considered a children's classic, Sewell originally wrote it for those who worked with horses. She said "a special aim was to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses".Victorian fiction and the cult of the horse by Gina M. Dorré. p. 95. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. (2006). . In many respects the book can be read as a guide to horse husbandry, stable management and humane training practices for colts. It is considered to have had an effect on reducing cruelty to horses; for example, the use of bearing reins, which are particularly painful for a horse, was one of the practices highlighted in the novel, and in the years after the book's release the reins became less popular and fell out of favor.
In 1878-1879, responding to the moderate positions taken by the German animal protection organizations on animal experimentation, Marie Espérance von Schwartz and two men began to form a dedicated anti-vivisection movement in Germany. In 1879 the anti-vivisectionists clashed with moderate animal protectionists at the German Animal Protection Congress, leading von Schwartz and one of the men to found the International Society for Combat Against Scientific Torture of Animals.Ulrich Trohler; Andreas-Holger Maehle (1990). "Anti-vivisection in 19th century Germany and Switzerland: Motives and Methods". In Nicolaas A. Rupke (ed.). Vivisection in Historical Perspective. Beckenham, Kent: Croom Helm, Ltd.
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.Rudacille, Deborah (2000). The Scalpel and the Butterfly, pp. 31, 46.
In 1883 Caroline Earle White founded the American Anti-Vivisection Society, which was the first anti-vivisection organization founded in the United States.
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. 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. The groups gained in popularity and amalgamated in 1891 to form the Society for the Protection of Birds in London. The Society gained its Royal Charter in 1904. The original members of the Society were all women who campaigned against the fashion of the time for women to wear exotic feathers in hats, and the consequent encouragement of "plume hunting".
In 1896 the Massachusetts Audubon Society (Mass Audubon) was founded by Harriet Hemenway and Minna B. Hall. Women played a critical role in the organization, counting for half of its officers and serving as leaders of most of the local chapters. The group used its political power to have a Massachusetts law passed in 1897 outlawing trade in wild bird feathers as well as a federal law, the 1900 Lacey Act, which prohibits the interstate shipment of animals killed in violation of local laws. The Massachusetts Audubon Society remains independent, but it helped to organize the National Association of Audubon Societies (incorporated in 1905), which later became the National Audubon Society.
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.Garner, Robert. Animals, Politics and Morality. (2005), p. 141.
1900s
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.Kean, Hilda. "The 'Smooth Cool Men of Science': The Feminist and Socialist Response to Vivisection" , History Workshop Journal, 1995, 40: 16–38. 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.Lansbury, Coral. The Old Brown Dog: Women, Workers, and Vivisection in Edwardian England. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985, pp. x and 24.
In 1908, Diana Belais founded the New York Anti-Vivisection Society.
In 1927, Jessey Wade founded the Cats Protection League. In 1932 she co-founded the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports.
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.
Anna Briggs founded the National Humane Education Society in 1948. 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.Stepaniak 2000, pp. 6–7; Linda Austin and Norm Hammond, Oceano, Arcadia Publishing, 2010, p. 39; Freya Dinshah, "Vegan, More than a Dream" , American Vegan, Summer 2010, p. 31.
The earliest documented practice of trap-neuter-return was in the 1950s, led by animal activist Ruth Plant in the U.K.Ellen Perry Berkeley, TNR: Past, Present and Future: A History of the Trap-Neuter-Return Movement (2004: Alley Cat Allies), . In 1951, the Animal Welfare Institute was founded by Christine Stevens.Saxon, Wolfgang. (2002). "Christine Stevens, 84, a Friend to the Animals" . The New York Times. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
On November 22, 1954, the Humane Society of the United States was founded by Marcia Glaser, Helen Jones, and two men.