Gendered Violence and the Politics of Animal Welfare in Urban India

This article examines the gendered politics of street dog feeding and caregiving in urban India, studying how legal protection for animals paradoxically coexists with everyday hostility towards both street dogs and their human caregivers, especially women. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Delhi-NCR, it analyses how, despite India’s Animal Birth Control Rules (2001, 2023) legally permitting the feeding and sterilisation of street dogs, women who engage in this form of care routinely face surveillance, harassment and violence. Drawing on critical animal studies, urban studies and gender scholarship, the article examines how public anxieties around sanitation and safety are projected onto women caregivers, framing their labour as a hyper-visible form of nuisance. It further studies the everyday strategies women develop to resist the violence they face, from developing informal solidarities to tactical delegation of care. Finally, by situating caregiving as a form of resistance rather than a depoliticised act of compassion, the article examines how women’s persistent presence in urban public spaces—particularly in Delhi—through street dog care disrupts dominant imaginaries of gender and species hierarchy.