Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice ed. by Lisa A. Kemmerer, and: Women and the Animal Rights Movement by Emily Gaarder (review)

The valuable contributions from Lisa A. Kemmerer's edited volume Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice and Emily Gaarder's Women and the Animal Rights Movement highlight the connections and tensions between feminist thought, personal narrative, and animal rights activism. The two books coalesce a collection of individual accounts into a growing literature on intersectional, anti-speciesist feminist thought, while situating these accounts within a larger, historically significant movement. As many critical scholars have pointed out, written histories are crafted within racist, patriarchal, and colonial frameworks that systematically erase the roles of many, while privileging the roles of some (Downson 2000; Guy-Sheftall 1995; Zinn 2003). Kemmerer's collection captures these often ignored accounts of women whose personal experiences shaped their political work. Through ethnographic research—specifically, participant observation and in-depth interviews—and archival documentation, Gaarder asserts that the involvement of women in the animal rights movement has been transformative. Taken together, these books carve out the historical significance of women's involvement in liberatory struggles and articulate the ways in which lived experiences inform theoretical analyses. Taken separately, Kemmerer and Gaarder approach this project with slightly different methodologies. Although ethnography remains a central tool for both, the structures of the books vary. Kemmerer and the contributors to Sister Species highlight their personal journeys to animal advocacy and feminism. Sister Species uses personal narratives to illustrate the multitude of approaches to thinking about animals in relation to ourselves. Gaarder, on the other hand, serves as an intermediary and fragments pieces of interviews with her analysis.

Women and the Animal Rights Movement

Gaarder undertakes the important project of historicizing the role of women in animal rights through narratives drawn from in-depth interviews and participant observation. Her book takes a dual approach: an historical discussion of the role of women in the animal rights movement, and an ethnographic study of contemporary animal advocates. It focuses not only on telling women's stories through biographical accounts of their involvement, but also explores how the politics of gender shape the tactics, strategies, images, and goals of the struggle against speciesism. Gaarder begins by broadly outlining the discourse among feminism, animal liberation, and ecofeminism, and the historical roles of women in these social movements. During the opening sections of the book, she examines the backgrounds and histories of the twenty-seven female respondents that make up the book's data set. In chapter 2, Gaarder continues this inquiry through explorations of four thematic veins, namely: the activists' childhood and family influences; the timeline for radicalization and involvement; changing lifestyles and diets; and involvement in other social justice movements.

Throughout chapter 3, the book interrogates why women constitute the majority of the animal rights movement, and, accordingly, it attempts to explain the absence of men, who traditionally dominated social movements in terms of sheer numbers. Gaarder attempts to problematize and historicize this demographic imbalance and to examine how a dominant female presence shapes the functions (for example, tactics and strategies), perceptions, and effectiveness of the movement. In this discussion, the author also tackles the difficult and controversial task of explaining women's gravitation toward animals, while simultaneously presenting essentialist descriptions with a critical eye. It is here where Gaarder examines issues of women's and animals' shared oppressions, and the biological determinism that presents women as "naturally" more caring beings.

Chapter 4 is based on how women's involvement in the animal rights movement effects other realms of their lives. Gaarder, for example, profiles a veterinary student and her vegan politics. The chapter also looks at how an awareness of animal rights can lead to changes in one's lifestyle, such as adopting a vegan diet, making different decisions about what to...