Ask a random person about the key thinkers in the animal rights movement and they are likely to name Peter Singer or Tom Regan. Their contributions mean men get a disproportionate amount of credit for the progress made towards animal liberation when women have been boldly standing up for animals for centuries.

For International Women’s Day, Claire Hamlett spotlights a few of the women who are actively advancing the rights of animals, either in their activism or professional work or in their contributions to public thought and discussion on this topic, who you may not have heard of before.

Gwenna Hunter

Hunter is an activist in Los Angeles who works to bring veganism to more people, particularly those in underserved communities. She coordinates the distribution of plant-based meals and groceries across LA and fosters dialogue between the vegan and Black Lives movements, having founded Vegans for Black Lives Matter in 2020 and Vegans of LA in 2015. She uses food and empathy as her main tools in getting people to think about how different groups, including other species, suffer from oppression. She also helps to organise and attend events such as silent vigils at slaughterhouses. Read the profile of her in the Unbound Project here.

Gina Bates

Bates is a veganic farmer in the Scottish Highlands and the founder of the Global Vegan Crowdfunder (GVC), an ethical crowdfunding platform. Through GVC she has helped to raise money for Beneath the Woods Sanctuary, where 91 enormous pigs are happily living out their days after being rescued from a life of hell, and has launched the Vegan Land Movement, which buys land used for animal agriculture to rewild it. Through this work and her online presence, Bates is a strong advocate for farmed and wild animals alike.

Corey Lee Wrenn

Dr Wrenn is a sociologist at the University of Kent and founder of the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project which aims to “eradicate oppression from the Nonhuman Animal rights movement and improve inclusiveness through dialogue and educational resources.” Dr Wrenn has written several books and numerous articles on animal rights, veganism, animal activism and their intersections with feminism and other social justice movements. Her work has been covered by the likes of the Atlantic, USA Today and Euronews, and she has been interviewed for radio programs and podcasts, bringing questions about how animals are treated in society to mainstream audiences.

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Delcianna Winders

Winders directs the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law School. She has worked on litigation for the legal protection of farmed animals in the U.S. and helped to bring an end to a policy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s that saw it secretly and illegally issuing Endangered Species Act permits to roadside zoos and circuses. She has sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for unlawfully deleting thousands of Animal Welfare-related records from its website. Listen to the interview with her on the Species Unite podcast from 2019 here.

Charu Chandrasekera

As the director of laboratory science for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Dr Chandrasekera leads the Committee’s efforts to find non-animal alternatives in research antibody production. She carries out her own hands-on laboratory research as well as undertaking policy advocacy work. She also helped to found the Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods. In the past, Dr Chandrasekera worked in a lab that used mice for research into heart failure but realised there had to be a better way than testing on animals. What changed her mind? Partly her cat, Mowgli, who taught her about animal sentience, and partly her father suffering a heart attack, which made her see that testing on mice couldn’t tell her what had gone wrong with her father’s heart. Read the profile of her in the Unbound Project here.

Jane Smith

Smith is the first elected councillor for and deputy leader of the Animal Welfare Party in the UK. She is a much-needed voice for animals in British politics as well as being active for wildlife as part of her local Wounded Badger Patrol and Toad Patrol. In 2021 she tabled a motion for her council to go plant-based by default in its catering, something which only a handful of other councils have started to move towards. Unfortunately, her motion was voted down, but she remains determined to bring about change. She is a frequent presence and speaker at animal rights rallies, such as the demos at Manchester Airport to stop the importation of animals destined for UK research labs, and the Animal Rebellion march in London last year.

Claire Hamlett is a freelance journalist, writer and regular contributor at Surge. Based in Oxford, UK, Claire tells stories that challenge systemic exploitation of and disregard for animals and the environment and that point to a better way of doing things.

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