The “typical” animal rights activist is a
middle-age, middle class white female.
 In the past 25-30 years a more “militant,”
youth-centered, male-centered form of
animal rights groups have developed

Very little scholarship has looked at how
women fare in animal rights, especially
these more “masculine” groups
 Even if the membership is mostly female,
leadership is disproportionately male
 Examples of sexism in other justicerelated groups (civil rights, labor, etc)
 Workforce experiences

Interviews & Participant Observation
 Email Survey
 Interviewees: 7 total (3 male, 4 female)
all in the Chicago/Indiana area
 Observations: 9 demonstrations/protests
(8 in Chicago, 1 in Milwaukee)
 Limits of the sample

Activist
 Organizer
 Vegetarian
 Vegan
 Straight-Edge
 Political Punk

Subtle sexism creates very different
expectations for men and women in
organizations:
“I‟ve noticed more males lead the chants”
– Missy, female activist
“It seems like men did a lot more of the
media work.”
-Anna, female activist


“I think in a lot of groups women get
stuck with photocopying literature, doing
the petitions, doing a lot of the gruntwork, a lot of crap-work. While the guys
are the spokespeople or the guys design
the stuff or they do a lot of the things
that get more of the „glory‟ of animal
rights. I‟ve seen that in a lot of groups
and I think that‟s really common.”
– Maya, female organizer
“What I have observed over the years is
that the men in the organization have
been the people who dictate what
goes. They dictate where the money‟s
spent, they dictate what campaigns will
be chosen.”
– Adam, male organizer
“I think that women have to prove themselves a
little bit more in that, „yes, I want to do this.‟ It‟s
supposed to be a non-biased group, but I have
noticed that you do have to push a little bit
further to show that I‟m not just some little girl
that wants, that doesn‟t want you to hurt my
doggy and kitty, you know? That type of thing.
It‟s also, some of the things the group does are
a little bit more intense and there are
preconceptions that females may not be able
to handle that. But like, in our last CD, there
was 9 people, and 7 of them were women.”
– Missy, female activist
Tolerance of sexist/violent behavior was
disturbing and created a “hostile
environment” for female activists and
organizers.
 Maya‟s experiences of the tolerance of
rapists in the movement:

“I think animal rights is more tolerant of people
than it should be of people and it‟s one of those
hard things… well, people feel it‟s hard because
the group is so small and we don‟t have that
many organizers, but I have no tolerance for
that kind of bullshit. I have no room.”
–Maya, female activist
Despite a focus on “liberation” women
still experience overt and covert sexism
in their work as animal rights activists.
 Ties between hegemonic masculinity
and militant groups
 Success of “social males” is tempered by
tolerance for violence against women
within groups.
