This paper examines how gender beliefs are embedded in the organizational practices of the reproductive market. Third party reproduction blurs boundaries between familial and non-familial members, making gamete banks and donation agencies important sites for studying the construction of family. Cultural beliefs about gender are implicated in the discourses and practices of these organizations, which shape and constrain the experiences and options for both gamete donors and recipient families. To evaluate this process, I conducted qualitative analyses on the recruitment materials of all of sperm banks, egg banks, and egg donation agencies in the United States. My analysis demonstrates that the reproductive market still relies on heteronormative assumptions of family. However, the extent to which these organizations facilitate participation in new, non-normative family forms breaks down along gendered lines, where sperm donors have more freedom, status, and potential to create relationships with recipient families than egg donors.
AckerJ. (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender & Society, 4(2), 139-158.
2.
AhujaK. K.SimonsE. G. (1996). Anonymous egg donation and dignity. Human Reproduction, 11(6), 1151-1154.
3.
AlmelingR. (2006). “Why do you want to be a donor?”: Gender and the production of altruism in egg and sperm donation. New Genetics and Society, 25(2), 143-157.
4.
AlmelingR. (2007). Selling genes, selling gender: Egg agencies, sperm banks, and the medical market in genetic material. American Sociological Review, 72(3), 319-340.
5.
AlmelingR. (2011). Sex cells: The medical market for eggs and sperm. University of California Press.
ASRM Ethics Committee. (2004). Informing offspring of their conception by gamete donation. Fertility and Sterility, 81(3), 527-531.
8.
BeckerG.ButlerA.NachtigallR. D. (2005). Resemblance talk: A challenge for parents whose children were conceived with donor gametes in the US. Social Science & Medicine, 61(6), 1300-1309.
9.
BeesonD.JenningsP. K.KramerW. (2011). Offspring searching for their sperm donors: how family type shapes the process. Human Reproduction, 26(9), 2415-2424.
10.
BeesonD.JenningsP.KramerW. (2013). A new path to grandparenthood: Parents of sperm and egg donors. Journal of Family Issues, 34(10), 1295-1316.
11.
BellA. V. (2009). “It’s way out of my league”: Low-income women’s experiences of medicalized infertility. Gender & Society, 23(5), 688-709.
12.
BenjaminR. (2013). People’s science: Bodies and rights on the stem cell frontier. Stanford University Press.
13.
BlythE. (2012). Genes r us? Making sense of genetic and non-genetic relationships following anonymous donor insemination. Reproductive BioMedicine Online, 24(7), 719-726.
14.
BurrJ. (2009). Fear, fascination and the sperm donor as “abjection” in interviews with heterosexual recipients of donor insemination. Sociology of Health & Illness, 31(5), 705-718.
15.
CahnN. (2015). The uncertain legal basis for the new kinship. Journal of Family Issues, 36(4), 501-518.
16.
CowdenM. (2012). “No harm, no foul”: A child’s right to know their genetic parents. International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, 26(1), 102-126.
17.
CurtisA. (2010). Giving ‘til it hurts: Egg donation and the costs of altruism. Feminist Formations, 22, 80-100. https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2010.0009
18.
DanielsC. R. (2008). Exposing men: The science and politics of male reproduction. Oxford University Press.
19.
DanielsC. R.Heidt-ForsytheE. (2012). Gendered eugenics and the problematic of free market reproductive technologies: Sperm and egg donation in the United States. Signs, 37(3), 719-747.
20.
DanielsK. R.LewisG. M. (1996). Donor insemination: The gifting and selling of semen. Social Science & Medicine, 42(11), 1521-1536.
21.
DanielsK. R.LewisG. M.GillettW. (1995). Telling donor insemination offspring about their conception: The nature of couples’ decision-making. Social Science & Medicine, 40(9), 1213-1220.
22.
DanielsK. R.TaylorK. (1993). Secrecy and openness in donor insemination. Politics and the Life Sciences, 12(2), 155-170.
23.
FlavinJ. (2008). Our bodies, our crimes: The policing of women’s reproduction in America. NYU Press.
24.
GoedekeS.DanielsK. (2017). The discourse of gifting in embryo donation: The understandings of donors, recipients, and counselors. Qualitative Health Research, 27(9), 1402-1411.
25.
HaimesE. (1993). Secrecy and openness in donor insemination: A sociological comment on Daniels and Taylor. Politics and the Life Sciences, 12(2), 178-179.
26.
HargreavesK. (2006). Constructing families and kinship through donor insemination. Sociology of Health & Illness, 28(3), 261-283.
27.
HaysS. (1998). The cultural contradictions of motherhood. Yale University Press.
28.
Heidt-ForsytheE. (2018). Between families and Frankenstein: The politics of egg donation in the United States. Univ of California Press.
29.
HertzR. (2006). Single by chance, mothers by choice: How women are choosing parenthood without marriage and creating the New American Family. Oxford University Press.
30.
HertzR.MattesJ. (2011). Donor-shared siblings or genetic strangers: New families, clans, and the Internet. Journal of Family Issues, 32(9), 1129-1155.
31.
HertzR.NelsonM. K.KramerW. (2013). Donor conceived offspring conceive of the donor: The relevance of age, awareness, and family form. Social Science & Medicine, 86, 52-65.
32.
HertzR.NelsonM. K.KramerW. (2015). Gendering gametes: The unequal contributions of sperm and egg donors. Social Science & Medicine, 147(C), 10-19.
33.
HertzR.NelsonM. K.KramerW. (2017). Donor sibling networks as a vehicle for expanding kinship: A replication and extension. Journal of Family Issues, 38(2), 248-284.
34.
JohnsonK. M. (2013). Making families: Organizational boundary work in US egg and sperm donation. Social Science & Medicine, 99, 64-71.
35.
KanterR. M. (1993). Men and women of the corporation. Basic Books.
36.
KimportK. (2012). Remaking the white wedding? Same-sex Wedding Photographs’ Challenge to Symbolic Heteronormativity. Gender & Society, 26(6), 874-899.
37.
MamoL. (2007). Queering reproduction: Achieving pregnancy in the age of technoscience. Duke University Press.
38.
MamoL.Alston-StepnitzE. (2015). Queer intimacies and structural inequalities: New directions in stratified reproduction. Journal of Family Issues, 36(4), 519-540.
39.
MauleL. S.SchmidK. (2006). Assisted reproduction and the courts: The case of California. Journal of Family Issues, 27(4), 464-482.
40.
McGeeG.BrakmanS. V.GurmankinA. D. (2001). Gamete donation and anonymityDisclosure to children conceived with donor gametes should not be optional. Human Reproduction, 16(10), 2033-2036.
41.
McKinnonS. (2015). Productive paradoxes of the assisted reproductive technologies in the context of the new kinship studies. Journal of Family Issues, 36(4), 461-479.
42.
McWhinnieA. (2001). Gamete donation and anonymityShould offspring from donated gametes continue to be denied knowledge of their origins and antecedents?Human Reproduction, 16(5), 807-817.
43.
MooreL. J. (2008). Sperm counts: Overcome by man’s most precious fluid. NYU Press.
44.
Nebeling PetersenM. (2018). Becoming gay fathers through transnational Commercial Surrogacy. Journal of Family Issues, 39(3), 693-719.
45.
NelsonJ. (2003). Women of color and the reproductive rights movement. NYU Press.
46.
NelsonM. K.HertzR. (2017). Pride and concern: differences between sperm and egg donors with respect to responsibility for their donor-conceived offspring. New Genetics and Society, 36(2), 137-158.
47.
NelsonM. K.HertzR.KramerW. (2016). Gamete donor anonymity and limits on numbers of offspring: the views of three stakeholders. Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 3(1), 39-67.
48.
NeuendorfK. A. (2016). The Content Analysis Guidebook. SAGE.
49.
NordqvistP. (2011). Choreographies of sperm donations: Dilemmas of intimacy in lesbian couple donor conception. Social Science & Medicine, 73(11), 1661-1668.
50.
OrobitgG.SalazarC. (2005). The gift of motherhood: Egg donation in a Barcelona infertility clinic. Ethnos, 70(1), 31-52.
51.
PeletzM. G. (1995). Kinship studies in late twentieth-century anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24(1), 343-372.
52.
RagonéH. (1994). Surrogate motherhood: Conception in the Heart. Westview Press.
53.
ReadingsJ.BlakeL.CaseyP.JadvaV.GolombokS. (2011). Secrecy, disclosure and everything in-between: decisions of parents of children conceived by donor insemination, egg donation and surrogacy. Reproductive BioMedicine Online, 22(5), 485-495.
54.
RidgewayC. L. (2009). Framed Before We Know It: How Gender Shapes Social Relations. Gender & Society, 23(2), 145-160.
55.
RidgewayC. L. (2011). Framed by gender: How gender inequality persists in the modern world. Oxford University Press.
56.
RobertsD. E. (1999). Killing the black body: Race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty. Vintage Books.
57.
RobertsD. E. (2009). Race, gender, and genetic technologies: A new reproductive dystopia?. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 34(4), 783-804.
58.
RudmanL. A.GlickP. (2012). The social psychology of gender: How power and intimacy shape gender relations. Guilford Press.
59.
RudmanL. A.Moss-RacusinC. A.PhelanJ. E.NautsS. (2012). Status incongruity and backlash effects: Defending the gender hierarchy motivates prejudice against female leaders. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 165-179.
60.
ScheibJ. E.RiordanM.RubinS. (2003). Choosing identity-release sperm donors: The parents’ perspective 13–18 years later. Human Reproduction, 18(5), 1115-1127.
61.
Scheper-HughesN. (2007). The tyranny of the gift: Sacrificial violence in living donor transplants. American Journal of Transplantation, 7(3), 507-511.
62.
SchniderD. (2004). What is kinship all about? In ParkinR.StoneL. (Eds.), Kinship and family: An anthropological reader (pp. 257-274). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
63.
ShanleyM. L.AschA. (2009). Involuntary childlessness, reproductive technology, and social justice: The medical mask on social illness. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 34(4), 851-874.
64.
SolingerR. (2007). Pregnancy and power: A short history of reproductive politics in America. NYU Press.
65.
SuterE. A.DaasK. L.BergenK. M. (2008). Negotiating lesbian family identity via symbols and rituals. Journal of Family Issues, 29(1), 26-47.
66.
ThompsonC. (2005). Making parents: The ontological choreography of reproductive technologies. MIT Press.
67.
TimmermansS.TavoryI. (2012). Theory construction in qualitative research: From grounded theory to abductive analysis. Sociological Theory, 30(3), 167-186.
68.
ToberD. M. (2001). Semen as gift, semen as goods: Reproductive workers and the market in altruism. Body & Society, 7(2–3), 137-160.
69.
TwineF. W. (2015). Outsourcing the womb: Race, class and gestational surrogacy in a global market.
70.
Von HagelA. (2014). Federalism and bioethics: Women’s health and the regulation of oocyte donation. Politics and the Life Sciences, 33(1), 79-91.
71.
YeeS. (2009). “Gift without a price tag”: Sltruism in anonymous semen donation. Human Reproduction, 24(1), 3-13. https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/den347
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
