International Women’s Day, 8th March 2021

 For the 2021 International Women’s Day we are delighted to celebrate the contribution that women have made to animal welfare, veterinary medicine, and One Welfare. The theme of this year’s International Women’s day is #ChooseToChallenge. This is so relevant to the work that many women do, and especially to those of us who work to improve animal welfare. So often we need to choose to challenge the status quo in animal management, to raise our voices to ask questions about whether this is the best approach for animals, and to remind others that animal lives matter too. In the past, and maybe still in the present, we risk being labelled as ‘fluffy’ or ‘bunny-huggers’ or a range of other derogative comments by those who do not want to consider that animals may be sentient and that actions towards them may cause suffering.

However, women have had a long history of challenging current thinking and practices to improve animal welfare. The book of a 19th Century novelist, Anna Sewell, about the life of a horse, Black Beauty, challenged the ways that horses were treated when horses were providing traction power everywhere, and argued for the ethical treatment of animals. In the early 1900s Dorothy Brooke was horrified at the treatment of ex-British army horses abandoned in Egypt and challenged the status quo by rescuing many horses and founding the charity The Brooke. In 1952 Rukmuni Devi Arundale was the first woman to be nominated to the Indian Parliament’s Council of States, and a passionate advocate of animal welfare, founding the Animal Welfare Board of India in 1962. Rachel Carson, a marine biologist from the US, is credited with advancing the global environmental movement through her book, Silent Spring, published in 1962, which brought arguments about conservation and environmentalism to the general public for the first time. And in 1964 Ruth Harrison wrote a pivotal book, Animal Machines, which exposed to the public the practices in modern livestock farming, and sparked a whole field of animal welfare science, and animal welfare legislation in the UK and beyond. Each of these women challenged the current thinking and practices, and showed that there could be another way. 

As more women become veterinary professionals and animal welfare scientists, and more women are engaged in working to improve animal welfare, we stand on the shoulders of these giants in choosing to challenge way animals are treated and working to make a difference for animal lives.

We thank you all.