Laboring Wombs and the Paradox of "Producing" Humans

Dr. Amrita Pande, Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, will present Laboring Wombs and the Paradox of "Producing" Humans.

"Dr. Pande analyzes the fundamental paradoxes of commercial surrogacy that on the one hand is dependent on global inequalities and is aligned with the postcolonial state's agenda of restricting births especially among the poor. On the other hand, commercial surrogacy provides conditions for bodily agency for these women even as they participate in the reproduction of children of higher classes and privileged nations. Interestingly, this not only results in a creative relationship forged between the surrogates and the baby and its intended mother, which transcends ties of caste, class, religion, and sometimes race and nation, but it nevertheless results in reifying structures of inequality."