Overview

In recent years increasing numbers of women from wealthy countries have turned to egg donation, egg freezing, and in vitro fertilization to become pregnant, especially later in life. This trend has created new ways of using, exchanging, and understanding oocytes-the reproductive cells specific to women. In The Oocyte Economy Catherine Waldby draws on 130 interviews---with scientists, clinicians, and women who have either donated or frozen their oocytes or received those of another woman---to trace how the history of human oocytes' perceived value intersects with the biological and social life of women. Demonstrating how oocytes have come to be understood as discrete and scarce biomedical objects open to valuation, management, and exchange, Waldby examines the global market for oocytes and the power dynamics between recipients and the often younger and poorer donors. With this exploration of the oocyte economy and its contemporary biopolitical significance, Waldby rethinks the relationship between fertility, gendered experience, and biomedical innovation.

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9781478004110

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What Waldby presents so compellingly is that there is an oocyte economy. Eggs have value and meaning, indeed they have different values and meanings in different contexts. -- Jane Maienschein * Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences * The Oocyte Economy is not only a rigorous study but a riveting read. -- Claire Horn * Women's Review of Books * This book offers a fascinating foray into the changing meaning of human oocytes for Western women and reproductive scientists. As such, it is a must-read for scholars of reproduction, and for related courses in anthropology, sociology, gender studies, and the history of science and medicine. -- Marcia C. Inhorn * Bulletin of the History of Medicine * A thought-provoking and original examination of the emergence of an economy premised on deep cultural beliefs about the meaning of oocytes.... Likely to become required reading in medicine, gender, and in the interdisciplinary field of reproduction. -- Rosanna Hertz * Society *

What Waldby presents so compellingly is that there is an oocyte economy. Eggs have value and meaning, indeed they have different values and meanings in different contexts. -- Jane Maienschein * Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences *

Author Information

Catherine Waldby is Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University and the author and coauthor of several books, including Clinical Labor: Tissue Donors and Research Subjects in the Global Bioeconomy, also published by Duke University Press.

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