Egg Donors vs. Sperm Donors: Who Is Valued More and Why?
This article suggests that sperm donors are underpaid because we don't really value fatherhood. And additionally, that egg donors are treated like precious, beatific saints because that's what we like to think about mothers.
That sounds kind of flattering for the women, at least, until you realize the flipside -- women who are mostly in it for the money are pathologized, whereas it's expected that men would donate sperm entirely for the money.
This stigmatizaton of market-motivated egg donors is aptly analogous to issues surrounding motherhood, as women who prefer participation in a market economy to the oh-so-precious task of wiping tiny noses have also long been pathologized.
I'm off to the fertility clinic for an ovarian reserve test to see if my eggs are still any good (28 is antediluvian for an egg donor!) If they are, I have a taker!
That sounds kind of flattering for the women, at least, until you realize the flipside -- women who are mostly in it for the money are pathologized, whereas it's expected that men would donate sperm entirely for the money.
This stigmatizaton of market-motivated egg donors is aptly analogous to issues surrounding motherhood, as women who prefer participation in a market economy to the oh-so-precious task of wiping tiny noses have also long been pathologized.
I'm off to the fertility clinic for an ovarian reserve test to see if my eggs are still any good (28 is antediluvian for an egg donor!) If they are, I have a taker!
Labels: economics, egg donation, feminism
posted by JenIsFamous at 7/10/2007 07:39:00 AM
2 Comments:
Does the market for egg donors tell us something about the Iraq War? Mike I. McClelland, political commentator and a* Ph.D. -candidate sociologist at Syracuse University, thinks it does.
Egg donation is a tricky process, requiring weeks of hormone therapy and outpatient surgery; physical risks are ever-present. Birthing a democracy is similarly a difficult process, requiring weeks, perhaps months or years, of injecting social and political customs into a resistant region, while the risk of devastating civil war is ever-present.
Sperm donation requires a donor to spend several minutes of his life in a darkened room, considering the myriad of wonders his offspring might one-day experience, emerging from his contemplation to find only a wad of cash and an exit sign. Many Iraqis are familiar with the process, hiding in rooms with no electricity, debating the merits of democracy's distant promise, opting for cash in exchange for a life of extremist exile.
McClelland, when asked why he chose the egg and sperm donors' respective roles in his analysis, responded, "because it was the best possible pairing to reach my rather obvious conclusion." Well, obviously.
*read: "not a."
In England we don't get paid for our deposits. Our gender is irrelevant.
Yes, donation is quite rare. Do you thing that there may be some correlation.
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