We’ve outsourced our jobs, why not outsource our babies too? This option of implanting a fertilized embryo into a surrogate mother from India is becoming an increasingly popular option for couples having trouble with fertility. This article, along with many others plus a Made In India documentary, raises questions about whether or not our moral values will be able to catch up with the rate of our technological advances. Believe it or not, this “medical tourism” industry is booming and increasing at an unbelievable rate, with reproductive outsourcing currently valued at around $450 million. Though this WebMD article is meant to be objective, it leans slightly towards the interpretation of this practice as a leap in progress for feminists. This particular interpretation echoes corporate voices from both Enloe’s Globetrotting Sneakers and Ehrenreich’s Maid to Order/Nickled and Dimed arguing how it benefits working class women by providing them jobs, all the while alleviating higher-class women from things that had traditionally oppressed them – like housework or child labor. It is presented as a win-win situation. However, I’m attempting to critique and present observations from the practice of reproductive outsourcing that contradict the notion that this practice is truly liberating for women at a global scale. Instead, by drawing ideas mainly from Douglas, Enloe, and Ehrenreich, I argue that reproductive outsourcing actually gives us the illusion of feminism, objectifies and commodifies women, and reinforces the hierarchy of women divided along class and racial lines, which defines who actually has access to feminism and who is left behind, carrying someone else’s fetus for nine months.

         Though Douglas uses her notion of enlightened sexism to dissect the media, the basis of her idea is how we are presented with the illusion that there is no longer a need to fight for feminism; it’s all said and done. This is exactly what is at play when groups of people accept this practice as a liberating innovation. Those who look forward to benefiting from this practice frame it as philanthropic. Like the corporate voices from Enloe’s piece, I find this argument to be highly ethnocentric, though it could be true as Indian surrogates earn $5,000-7,000 per successful birthing, which is a significant amount of money in India. This philanthropic argument seems like an excuse and a pure after-thought to me. If we were truly interested in philanthropy, we would be focusing on global policies that increase the safety net for these women and their families so it would not be necessary for them to resort to selling their bodies to raise their living standards. The philanthropic argument stands weak against all the benefits foreigners gain. Looking at finances alone, this procedure in India costs 17% of what it would cost in the States and I can’t even imagine the difference in earning a surrogate mother in the U.S. would receive compared to an Indian surrogate mother. Currently, Indian surrogate mothers earn 10% of the American procedural costs using the high estimate of their earnings stated above.

         Also, after a bit of sleuthing on the Internet, I found that the majority of these companies are run and owned by men. Douglas talked about the media and how many scripts are male written and directed even though the media object is framed as being feminist and I see this connecting very well with what is occurring here. Even the advertisements and pictures on these medial tourism websites have pictures showing white, male doctors as if they represented the population of reliable medical physicians. So, when the women doing the work of bringing life to the world is earning around $6,000 for a procedure that earns the company $12,000 - $25,000, I wonder about who is actually advantaged in this business relation. Also, as this industry grows, I wonder how these conditions will change for the worse as word gets out about reproductive outsourcing. Conditions might seem acceptable now, but as demand increases, I worry about these numbers changing. If these numbers do change, how invisible will surrogate mothers become, masked behind an illusion of feminism? Sure, the reason to seek another women’s body to host one’s baby due to problems with fertility is the leading reason as to why this industry is booming, but what’s to stop this trend from feeding into other reasons? Specifically, reasons that are essentially cosmetic and aesthetic in nature? We’ve talked about vaginoplasty and have heard about failing “miracle stretch mark creams,” but these growing surgeries are to fix the “side-effects” of pregnancy. Given how vain our culture has become, what if reproductive outsourcing was a way to bypass these “side-effects” along with the pain and burden of carrying a child? These are the types of questions we have to ask given that there are currently no regulations and restrictions on this relatively new practice.

         Earlier, I had asserted that that these Indian women are essentially selling their bodies in order to earn their way into a more livable life. A radical connection can be made of this practice to a type of prostitution, though traditional intercourse is bypassed through in vitro fertilization. Also, from the way they decide between surrogate mothers, I couldn’t help but sense the commercialized-farm-like atmosphere where farmers and researchers view their cows and pigs as a number (age, weight, exposure to stressful conditions, strength), as an object. And the advertisements and marketing of these women’s availability to “rent” out their womb is turning these women into commodities. As Marx had predicted, capitalist ventures would turn human relationships into what he calls the “cash nexus value.” Though there are popular stories of how foreigners break caste systems by embracing and crying and expressing feelings of gratitude, it is unpopular to emphasize that many foreigners only see the surrogate mother twice – once for fertilization and once for delivery and pick-up. Furthermore, many clinics house their surrogates in dormitories attached to the clinic where they are to remain for the rest of their pregnancy and some clinics restrict the women from ever touching or seeing the baby in fear of emotional attachment.

         Unlike the conditions Enloe revealed about locked dormitories in sweatshops, women who live in these dormitories received top-notch medical care. This alone would sound promising if it were not for the reason why these women had to be in their healthiest state. It’s shocking to me that infant mortality rate seems to be low in these facilities profiting from successful births within a country that has an infant mortality rate of 48%. Furthermore, there has been no discussion about medical care for these women after labor or should they encounter complications or side effects from birthing. To medical tourism companies, this is not economically important enough to spark discussions like this. The bodies of surrogates are only important to the extent that these bodies are still commodities. After birth, the business relation ceases and the economic incentive to treat these women well disappear. Thus, looking at the treatment of these women during the job may very well support that this practice is a mutually beneficial relationship and philanthropic, but these observations may be misleading if not criticized and looked at from a different angle.

         Using Mink’s definition of feminism as a process of “winning choices for women,” then I agree that this practice is slightly feminist. But, I have to ask: choices for which women? The party who has won the right to choose is not the party of surrogates in India, but the middle-class and upper-class women from foreign countries. When the journalist asked the American customer why she didn’t choose to stay longer or see the surrogate mother more often than for fertilization and pick-up, she said that she was busy because she had a house to renovate. This is a prime example of not only the choice to have a baby but do away with the negative effects of carrying the baby, but also of class privilege. Though this is the way I see it, American women hail it as a practice that actually shrinks class stratifications among women. As one American woman puts it, “Doctors, lawyers, accountants, they can afford it, but the rest of us — the teachers, the nurses, the secretaries — we can’t…Unless we go to India.” But, this practice disproportionately benefits one group of women on the backs, or in this case – uteruses – of another group of women. Looking at it this way, reproductive outsourcing is not a feminist practice. In fact, it pits women against each other by solidifying hierarchies among women. The aforementioned example focuses on the stratification of women based on class, but there is also racial stratification embedded in this practice and Ehrenreich’s Maid to Order helps to analyze it in such a way that reveals these stratifications.

         Many in our class were startled by the White child’s response to seeing child of color in the grocery store. “Look, a baby maid!” was the response. This is telling of how we often link different races and ethnicities to specific occupations – and usually in a hierarchical way. In America, Latino women get stereotyped as maid workers and Asian women get stereotyped as salon workers. We start to think, to some degree, like the White child in the supermarket that it is justifiable to link biology to a way of living. Foreign women who seek surrogates from India feel alleviated from the fear of emotional attachment between the surrogate woman and the baby, which became a problem in America made famous by the Supreme Court case Johnson v. Calvert. Vohra, a surrogate woman says what all foreign customers want to hear when asked about emotional attachment to the baby. “It won't even have the same skin color as me, so it won't be hard to think of it as [my client’s]," Vohra insists. But this excuse is unsettling because it assumes that we can’t have feelings of love and emotional attachment because of a barrier based on the color of our skin. There is a way of thinking that expects these women of color to be desensitized to pregnancy, that it is inherently this way. This in itself shows how a certain group of women control the feminist agenda and others do not have access to this.

         Sure, there is definitely benefit, monetarily, for everyone involved. This is what happens when a new industry sprouts upward. However, we need to raise questions about what we are doing and all of the implications it has on all groups of people before we establish such a practice as progressive for women. These Indian surrogate women cannot go to the Supreme Court and fight for justice like the women involved in Johnson v. Calpert did. People seek outsourced medical services for the same exact reason we seek outsourced goods. It’s cheaper and the people who pay the price of having it be cheaper are the female laborers risking their life to delivering someone else's blood and flesh to the world. The discussion over how this practice actually helps global feminism by putting money into these women's pockets is a distraction from the real question of how we are actually going to raise safety nets for these women. France, along with many European nations have already ruled commercial surrogacy as illegal. The court's final ruling was based upon the idea that "the human body is not lent out, is not rented out, is not sold." There seems to be a pattern here. Finland as a role model for education, France as a role model for family-friendly policies. What are we the role models of? Having babies that have an invisible tag on their belly buttons, a severed connection from the surrogate mother, that proudly states, "Made in India"?



Other References


http://www.mentorsethicare.com/our_team.html
http://www.mediescapes.com/about.html
http://www.medindia.us/letter.php
http://helloji.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/made-in-india-babies-outsourced/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/world/asia/10surrogate.html?pagewanted=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k_h-Z-Lv2c
http://www.indexmundi.com/india/infant_mortality_rate.html

News Flash: High School Wrestler Refuses to Fight a Girl

News Flash: High School Wrestler Refuses to Fight a Girl

On February 23, 2011, CNN posted a video on cnn.com, which happens to be my homepage and is the main source of my news. The video immediately caught my attention, because the title of the story was “High School Wrestler Won’t Fight a Girl”. In the video, a male African American CNN Newscaster has a conversation via webcam with fifteen-year old Joel Northrup, and his father, who are both from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Joel is a sophomore in high school and is on the wrestling team. In the Iowa State Champion Tournament, Joel made it to the finals and was matched up against a girl named Cassy Herkelmann. Instead of fighting for the title of State Champion, Joel decided to forfeit the match solely because he didn’t want to wrestle a girl. In the interview, Joel offers a few different explanations for his decision, but mainly states that he just didn’t feel that it would be “right” for him to fight a girl. In addition to Joel, CNN also offers some coverage of Cassy, although that coverage is extremely limited. In response to Joel’s decision, Cassy stated that she did not agree with it, and she believes that since she is playing the same sport and doing the same thing as Joel, he should have agreed to wrestle her. I argue that CNN’s coverage of this event was handled very poorly for a number of different reasons, and I also believe that Joel’s decision was based on a retrograde and archaic view of the women, which relates to Susan Douglas’ idea of enlightened sexism.

When I listened to Joel’s reasoning for his decision to give up the possibility of winning the State Championship, I initially noticed that he bases his decision on social constructs, and does not make any distinction between sex and gender. When the newscaster asked Joel why he didn’t feel comfortable wrestling a girl, Joel responded “Wrestling is a combat sport and at times it gets violent, and you get put in moves and holds that are compromising. I just don’t believe it’s right that a boy and a girl should, in this manner, wrestle”. He clarifies that his decision was due to two factors: not wanting to interact so closely with a girl, and also not wanting to potentially harm a girl by slamming her down on the wrestling mat. The issue that I have with these statements is that Joel clearly feels uncomfortable wrestling a girl because he does not want to touch her in ways that could be interpreted as sexual. However, Joel completely assumes that Cassy is a straight female who is interested in men. Anne Fausto-Sterling would certainly take issue with Joel’s argument, because he fails to see the difference between sex and gender. Joel needs to realize that gender is just a social construction. If he refuses to wrestle Cassy, this makes me question what his reaction would be to wrestling a boy who identifies as gay.

Another issue that I have with Joel’s decision is that he claims that it was in part a religious decision. Joel’s father explains that there is a “biblical principle of treating women with respect and dignity, and not looking at them as objects to be defeated on the wrestling mat”. I believe both Joel and his father are what Susan Douglas would call enlightened sexists. While these men believe that Joel’s decision to forfeit his wrestling match with Cassy was made out of respect for women, the decision involves retrograde feminist ideas (Douglas). If Joel really wanted to respect women, I believe that he should have participated in the wrestling match against Cassy. In today’s day and age, women want to be treated as equals. Although chivalry is sometimes thought of as romantic and gentlemanly, Joel’s decision made Cassy feel like she was being treated poorly based on her gender.

Although Joel’s decision was shocking to me, I think that CNN’s coverage of the event was even more astounding, for a number of different reasons. First, I thoroughly disliked the way that Cassy’s side of the story was handled. Joel explained that he decided not to wrestle Cassy, and at the mention of her name the CNN newscaster cued a video of Cassy’s reaction to the event (see video at 2:30). She explains that although she is a girl wrestler, she wants people to treat her the same way that boys are treated in the sport. She expressed disappointment at Joel’s decision and seemed hurt that she has been treated differently, solely because she is a girl. Cassy spoke for exactly thirteen seconds out of the almost six minute long CNN video. Not only did she appear on screen for such a short amount of time, but she was also the only female perspective that we saw in the entire video. Cassy is a girl participating in wrestling, a sport that is very male dominated. She is breaking female stereotypes by wrestling boys. I think that her story had so much unrealized potential, and CNN is to blame. I wish that Cassy had more screen time, and I especially wish that the CNN newscaster offered a different reaction to the interview.

In response to Joel’s decision, the newscaster congratulates Joel and his father on the boy’s decision to not wrestle the girl. Furthermore, he even tells them that many people across the nation have applauded his decision. The interview comes to an end with the newscaster’s final comment to Joel’s father: “Congratulations on your son, he seems like a good man”. CNN handled this story so poorly, because they ended up supporting Joel’s decision, even though they were fully aware that Cassy was upset by the decision. This exemplifies Susan Douglas’s idea that the media perpetuates enlightened sexism. Clearly, Joel’s decision was sexist. However, the media puts a positive spin on this story and through congratulating Joel, CNN sends the message that “this is what women want”…they want to be treated in retrograde sexist ways. Of course, as we know from reading Douglas, this is the essence of enlightened feminism.

CNN had the opportunity to advocate for women’s rights and equality, but the newscaster’s positive response to the event did the exact opposite. In class, we have talked at length about how change in society needs to be a “top-down” process, in the sense that change will occur in society if it is initiated by a powerful source. CNN, being a well-respected and highly read news source, had the chance to start societal change, but instead chose to promote enlightened sexism. Perhaps it would have been more effective if CNN used a female newscaster for this story, because she would have offered a female perspective on the event. However, I am positive that CNN’s choice to use a male newscaster was completely intentional, because it would have been extremely difficult for a female newscaster to effectively and convincingly congratulate Joel on his sexist decision.

News Flash #2: A Critical Eye on Statistical Responses

http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/cwg/data-on-women

http://www.businessinsider.com/actually-the-gender-pay-gap-is-just-a-myth-2011-3

On the first day of Women’s History Month (this March) the White House released a comprehensive report on the social and economic well-being of American women. It is the first report of its kind in almost fifty years, and it collects valuable data that allows evaluation of income, education, employment, health, and crime. The White House’s Office of the Press Secretary chose to summarize the report with a few bullet points. These facts were among them:

• Women have surpassed men in college attendance and nearly matched men in the labor force
• The above facts do not generate income equity: women make 75% of what their male counterparts make and are more likely to be in poverty (particularly women of color)

Throughout March the media has reacted to these figures, noting progress and pointing out pitfalls in women’s struggle for equality over the last half of a century. A lot can be learned by combing through the facts and figures in this report, but I think we can discover more about our society by keeping a critical eye on some of the ways this information has been received by the American public over the last month.

One article by Steve Tobak has been published by BNET (a CBS company) and Business Insider. Posted only one week after the White House released its report, the article has earned tens of thousands of views and a fair number of facebook “likes.” The article’s reception is reflected by its notable position among google search results for “gender pay gap,” which will likely garner more views. Tobak uses the title “The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth” and lists “eight reasons why.” He proudly cites “highly acclaimed career expert and best-selling author Marty Nemko,” whom he repeatedly praises for using authentic, unbiased data like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, Tobak does not relay the fact that Nemko is the Co-President of The National Organization for Men and probably has a biased agenda considering he spends a good amount of time publishing titles like “The New Double Standard,” “Sexism Against Men,” and “Saving Our Young Men” all in the name of “fair treatment of men and women in education, the workplace, public policy, health care, family law, and the media.”

Quite literally, the bottom line of Tobak’s article is to “celebrate International Women’s Day 2011 by empowering women with the truth instead of treating them like victims … which they’re not.” The basis for this message is that, according to Tobak and Nemko, women earn the same amount as men when they make the same career choices. This is where the article makes a noticeable turn. It does not try to debunk the idea that men make more money than women; it shows why men make more money than women and essentially argues that women would make more money if they simply acted in the ways that men do.

The first three points on the list argue that men “are more likely to” choose work that is more dangerous, is in less desirable locales, or is simply higher paying. There is no arguing that this is how the numbers fall. There are definitely more female professionals in education and health care while males dominate engineering, computers, and dangerous manual labor. But by putting these things on a list of reasons “why the gender pay gap is a complete myth,” Tobak is essentially arguing that these jobs and opportunities are just as available to women as they are to men. He is blaming the financial imbalance on the choices of women rather than considering whether or not our male dominated society may be creating and reinforcing obstacles that prevent women from gaining access to these options.

The next two points attempt to show that men are simply willing to work more hours, evenings, and weekends than women are. It does not take into account that social pressures make women much less likely to be capable of taking on more hours because of obligations at home or to children that men are less liable to be responsible for. Really, this statistic itself is very indicative of why women are less likely to take on more hours: if a heterosexual two parent household has obligations at home and the male is more likely to “choose” more hours, late nights, and weekends, it doesn’t appear that the female counterpart to this hard-working husband has much of a choice to do the same. It is a self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating statistic.

The sixth point uses the common example of medical professions stating that men “gravitate” towards the specializations that pay more because of higher stress (like surgery instead of pediatrics). We always have to be critical of why the numbers are skewed this way and can’t assume that it is because women are inherently drawn to these positions. Furthermore, we cannot assume that these occupational tendencies explain away the wage gap. A study released last month by Health Affairs in New York compares salaries of male and female doctors in the same field of practice and accounts for hours clocked (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/02/03/133466384/women-docs-fall-further-behind-on-pay). Even with all of this considered female physicians earned an average of $17,000 less than men in their starting salaries. More troubling: this number has grown over the past ten years by $13,000, and the wage gap increases as the comparable men and women move farther into their careers. This data conflicts with Tobak’s assumption that “apples to apples” comparisons would find men and women equal.

Which leads to the point he tries to make in point number seven: “unmarried women who’ve never had a child actually earn more than unmarried men.” This is his idea of an “apples to apples” comparison. Basically, to make men and women equal he has to limit the female population to a fraction of itself and eliminate the social pressures of marriage and children, which are at the heart of the wage gap as Crittenden’s “Mommy Tax” shows. Furthermore, the source he cites claiming that women earn more than men clearly states that this “phenomenon” is limited to the nation’s biggest cities and is largely because the comparison is made across age-group, not accounting for the fact that urban women are much more likely to have a higher level of education. He attempts to use the same logic of “apples to apples” by comparing male and female business owners. This point is just as easily turned up-side-down by the same arguments used against the others. The business world has been constructed under such a strong patriarchal society that female success is, across the board, rendered more difficult.

What is most frightening about this article is the reception it has gotten. Business insider shows it having 24,100 views and countless supportive comments. To make matters worse, the response article that the website published arguing for the legitimacy of the wage gap has less than 250 views (http://www.businessinsider.com/face-the-facts-gender-pay-gap-is-real-2011-3) and only two people posted in disagreement. Additionally, there is not a single link to the retort page amongst the 57 advertisements and links that flood Tobak’s article. I see it as shining evidence for the truth to Susan Douglas’ Enlightened Sexism. Tobak has the audacity to publish this article and say that the “truth” he has laid out will help empower women, when it really gives men and women in this society a false sense of comfort and accomplishment.

It is arguments like this that build our feelings of indifference and downplay the necessity to address these issues. The biggest threat they pose is their repeated conviction that they provide “proof” and “truth.” By distorting statistics and citing “legitimate” sources in ways they were not intended for, arguments like these garner support from the masses of people who want to believe what it says. In reality, this article makes its argument backwards: it assumes that women and men have equal opportunity and uses the numbers to show that women have less of a drive for financial success. It should assume that men and women share an equal drive and capacity for success and use the numbers to show that women are being held back from achieving it. By keeping an eye on public responses like these, we keep an ear to the pulse of feminism. These negative interpretations of data collected with good, informative intentions cannot become distractions from the truth of inequality. When considering the gender wage gap we must always ask questions. Do women really have an equal chance at the jobs men dominate? And are men really just more inclined to pursue more money and power or does our society dole out money and power to the arenas that men inhabit? Staying critical of articles that claim to be fact like this one will lead us to a more honest understanding of women’s well-being America.