The Commodified Womb and Neoliberal Families

Abstract

Neoliberalism as an economic ideology of governance through markets has functioned to break down the gendered dichotomies of public and private, market and home, and production and reproduction and in so doing has created new forms of subjectivity, families, and relationships between women. A critical analysis of the globalization and commodification of reproduction in the form of transnational surrogate motherhood contracts between Western and Southern women reveals the different ways in which intending parents and surrogate mothers are incorporated into gendered and racial circuits of global specialization and exchange.