Honoring & Defending Females of All Species for International Women’s Month
March is International Women’s Month, a time to honor female empowerment and work toward a more just and equitable world for all women. What’s often left out, however, is the plight of female non-human animals, who face violence and systemic oppression worldwide.
The sexual violation of females and the exploitation of their reproductive systems, including forced impregnation, are inherent in all animal farming as well as in animal experimentation, the commercial pet trade, zoos, equine sports, fur production, and birthing exhibits at fairs.
They are controlled, commodified, and forced to endure the trauma of having their babies taken from them, all in the name of tradition, taste, and profit.
We amplify and defend the right of all female animals to live free from enslavement and domination, honoring the sacred bond between mothers and their young. This March, we invite you to join the movement for a vegan world with our special program for International Women’s Month.
Expert Animal Activist Program for International Women’s Month
Wednesday, March 25, 2 p.m. PST
Liberation for All: Vegan Women Activists for Animal Justice
Join us for an inspiring and thought-provoking live online event hosted by our Farmed Animal Campaign Specialist, Lia Wilbourn, featuring two visionary women advocates for animals.
Yvette Baker (she/her), Executive Director of APEX Advocacy
Yvette is a lifelong social justice advocate moving through the world as a writer, educator, movement organizer, social worker, critic, and proud rat lady for Total Liberation. She's worked with various animal rights organizations as an educator and grassroots organizer, highlighting the need to understand systemic oppression and the principle of collective liberation as one of the most effective tools to build cross-movement solidarity and work towards our common goals. Guided by an Afro-Indigenous lens, her work is rooted in a shared accountability to all relations. She loves building with comrades, sharing space with beyond-human kin, and being the star dancer of every music video playing in her head.
Ashley Capps (she/her), Founder of Mothers Against Dairy
Ashley received an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has published a book of poems, Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields. By day, she works as the Director of Research and Communications for the food and climate justice non-profit A Well-Fed World, and as a freelance writer on issues related to animal rights. She also founded and directs the campaign Mothers Against Dairy. For more than a decade, Ashley has been co-editing THE NEW SENT(I)ENCE, an animal poetry anthology forthcoming from Trinity University Press in April 2026. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she is often looking for rocks and sometimes working on a second collection of poems. Her website is ashley-capps.com.
Understand the Deception and Cruelty of All Animal Farming
Learn about the hidden violence of the dairy industry and its desecration of motherhood and the female reproductive system, and spread the word about humanewashing.
Please also take action on our alert to expose Certified Humane, Animal Welfare Approved, Global Animal Partnership, and other programs that deceive the public while ignoring the suffering and killing of mothers and their babies in all animal farming.
Harm to Female Animals Goes Beyond Animal Farming
Learn more about how other industries are harming domesticated and wild female animals and their babies.
Animal Companions
In puppy mills, female dogs are repeatedly forcibly impregnated, confined, and often neglected and denied care.
Rescue, don’t ever buy. Learn more about puppy mills.
Elephants
Zoos force elephant pregnancies through sexually assaulting both males and females in zoos to produce babies, while framing zoos as conservation. It’s a business strategy; baby elephants sell tickets. Once the novelty fades, the female babies suffer the same cycle of control and loss as their mothers, while the male babies are ripped from their mothers and shuffled between zoos to breed.
Take action for suffering female elephants at our Elephants campaign.
Harp Seals
The Canadian seal hunt massacres mother seals and their pups, killing hundreds of thousands each year during breeding and nursing seasons. It is the largest commercial slaughter of marine mammals in the world. When a mother is killed, her dependent pup is almost always guaranteed to die. The hunt primarily targets harp seal pups, often only a few weeks old, for their fur.
Take action to end Canada’s seal hunt.
Orcas
Orcas live in matriarchal societies, and postmenopausal females often lead the pods. Some grandmother orcas live to be over 100 years old. In captivity, mothers are torn from their calves, shattering deep family bonds.
Take action for all mother whales and their babies at our Cetaceans campaign.
Celebrate International Calf & Cow Mother’s Day
We stand in solidarity with the Million Vegan Grandmothers for the first International Calf and Cow Mothers’ Day, on Mother’s Day weekend 2026, for a ritual of remembrance, education, and celebration that centers mother–child bonds across species.
We invite communities and cultural groups to celebrate International Calf & Cow Mothers’ Day with local art, such as essays, visual, musical, film, theatrical, and intergenerational projects to inspire empathy and justice for mothers and babies of all species.
Funders are also encouraged to contribute to ensure arts programs and sanctuary visits are fully accessible to everyone.
Get involved here.
Women Leading Transformative Change for Animals
Learn about women making history for animals.
Educational Alternatives to Chick-Hatching Projects
Each spring, schools often incubate eggs to teach “the life cycle,” usually with no plan for the chicks afterward — sending the message that animals are disposable. To counter egg industry messaging in classrooms, a horrific industry that kills all male chicks and their mother hens, The Hatching Kindness Project offers a humane alternative.
Hatching Kindness replaces live animals with compassionate, animal-free lessons. Free for educators, it teaches respect for animals and prevents needless suffering while still meeting educational goals.
Learn more about The Hatching Kindness Project.
Access Our Free Vegan Resources and Activist Support
- Vegan Mentor Support Group: Free, monthly, online support for curious pre-vegans, new and seasoned vegans, and animal advocates.
- Plant-Based Nutrition Guidance: Discover the many benefits of a whole food, plant-centric diet.
- Animal Activist 24-7 Support Line: Free counseling, mediation, and therapist referrals by phone, text, email, and online chat.
- Animal Activist Support Group: Free, monthly, online support for activists.
- Compassion Fatigue resources: To help heal your heart and sustain your animal advocacy.
- Get our Free Vegan Starter Guide
Get the Latest News
Every mother and their baby, and every individual on this planet, deserves to live free from exploitation. See our Vegan Wake Up Call, share with others, and join us!
For upcoming features in March and beyond, highlighting the following struggles of female animals, their sacred bonds with their young, and why their suffering must be exposed and ended, watch for our eNews on Fridays and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and X/Twitter.
