Using data on submitted and published manuscripts in Feminist Economics from 1995 to 2019, we examine differences in method and scope used by authors residing in the Global North and Global South. We specifically focus on research methods, intersectional analyses, region of analysis, and co-authorship status. Further, using logistic regression models, we examine the relationship between authors’ location and use of research methods. We find authors in the Global South are more likely to engage in empirical and mixed-methods papers compared (...) to Global North authors in our sample. Moreover, a greater share of Global South authors engage in intersectional analysis and exhibit geographical focus on developing countries. Drawing insights from the Feminist Economics manuscripts data, we argue that encouraging Global South research can contribute to the goals of the field of feminist economics – aimed at inclusivity, diversity of standpoints, and plurality in research methods, thereby improving overall economic research. (shrink)

Bioethics has paid surprisingly little attention to the special problems faced by women and to feminist analyses of current health care issues other than ...

Drawing on interviews with seasonal agricultural workers employed in Canada from Jamaica and Mexico, this paper focuses in on the experiences of a Jamaican farmworker who remits funds to pay a neighbour to farm his land (or the land he leases) while in Canada, and who participates in regular long-distance discussions with family members and neighbours back home about the upkeep of the farm. The concept of a “transnational agricultural care chain” is proposed here to capture a series of personal (...) links between people, located, at least temporarily, in different countries, who tend to the crops and farmland as a practice that entails asymmetrical relations of obligation to care for others. Agricultural care chains form part of a strategy to get by and possibly even advance the economic and social standing of one’s family under difficult economic conditions. Land access, as a co-constitutive sphere of production and reproduction, is another important factor in the livelihood strategies of rurally-rooted migrants, but the significance placed on land must be understood in connection to the uneven processes of global capitalism, histories of colonialism and, in the case of Jamaica, plantation slavery. The paper concludes with a reflection on how transnational agricultural care chains as paradigmatic of the contemporary food system are relevant to political and conceptual discussions around food sovereignty. (shrink)

Originally applied on domestic and lab animals, assisted reproduction technologies (ARTs) have also found application in conservation breeding programs, where they can make the genetic management of populations more efficient, and increase the number of individuals per generation. However, their application in wildlife conservation opens up new ethical scenarios that have not yet been fully explored. This study presents a frame for the ethical analysis of the application of ART procedures in conservation based on the Ethical Matrix (EM), and (...) discusses a specific case study—ovum pick-up (OPU) procedures performed in the current conservation efforts for the northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni)—providing a template for the assessment of ART procedures in projects involving other endangered species. (shrink)

Although most studies investigated the impact of infertility and its treatment on the couple, a small body of evidence suggested that infertility care providers may experience different sources of stress related for instance to excessive workload, the complexity of the technique, and relational difficulties with patients. The current study aimed at providing further insight into the understanding of the subjective experience of infertility care providers by highlighting their feelings and emotions, personal meanings, challenges, and opportunities. Following the methodological guidelines of (...) Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, we conducted individual semi-structured interviews with 23 members of two different fertility units. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Textual analysis was then conducted to identify emerging dominant themes and subthemes. Three main themes were extracted: dealing with infertile patients and their specificities, performing assisted reproductive technology, being part of a team. These themes related to participants experiencing: difficulties in establishing an empathic connection and communicating with couples, such that women were sometimes perceived as “particular patients” and men as poorly involved in the process; difficulties in dealing with a complex procedure in which errors are not allowed, with a growing number of women aged > 40 seeking assisted reproduction, despite the risks for their health; being part of a team as a resource, although the huge amount of time spent together can involve conflicts and organizational problems. These findings suggested that patients’ overpersistence represents an important source of stress for infertility care providers. At the same time, the concept of particular or difficult patient derives from the combination of multiple factors, including providers’ own history and subjective experience. The presence of mental health professionals in fertility units is essential to help providers improve the quality of doctor-patient communication and relieve the stress related to organizational issues and conflicts. (shrink)

In 2017, a Philadelphia research team revealed the closest thing to an artificial womb the world had ever seen. The ‘biobag’, if as successful as early animal testing suggests, will change the face of neonatal intensive care. At present, premature neonates born earlier than 22 weeks have no hope of survival. For some time, there have been no significant improvements in mortality rates or incidences of long-term complications for preterms at the viability threshold. Artificial womb technology, that might change these (...) odds, is eagerly anticipated for clinical application. We need to understand whether AWT is an extension of current intensive care or something entirely new. This question is central to determining when and how the biobag should be used on human subjects. This paper examines the science behind AWT and advances two principal claims. First, AWT is conceptually different from conventional intensive care. Identifying why AWT should be understood as distinct demonstrates how it raises different ethico-legal questions. Second, these questions should be formulated without the ‘human being growing in the AW’ being described with inherently value laden terminology. The ‘human being in an AW’ is neither a fetus nor a baby, and the ethical tethers associated with these terms could perpetuate misunderstanding and confusion. Thus, the term ‘gestateling’ should be adopted to refer to this new product of human reproduction: a developing human being gestating ex utero. While this paper does not attempt to solve all the ethical problems associated with AWT, it makes important clarifications that will enable better formulation of relevant ethical questions for future exploration. (shrink)

The Wall Street Journal article “Putting a Price on a Human Egg” triggered extensive media coverage of a rather unusual challenge to payments made to women providing ova for use in assisted reproduction. In Kamakahi v. American Society for Reproductive Medicine and Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies, plaintiffs claim that ASRM and SART policies adopting limits on such payments violate the federal antitrust prohibition against price fixing.In 2007, an ASRM Ethics Committee Report, confirming a 2000 report, asserted that, “[a]lthough (...) there is no consensus on the precise payment that oocyte donors should receive, at this time sums of $5,000 or more require justification and sums above $10,000 are not appropriate.” SART is an affiliate organization of ASRM and counts as its members 90 percent of the clinics providing assisted reproductive technologies in the United States. SART requires that its members “[adhere] to all ASRM/SART Guidelines including ethical, practice, advertising, and laboratory.” The plaintiffs in Kamakahi claim that the agreement among SART members to abide by the ASRM policy restricts competition among agencies procuring oocytes and produces lower payments than women would otherwise be able to negotiate. It is through the requirement that SART members adhere to ASRM ethical guidelines that ethics goes to market and encounters antitrust law. Ethicists continue to debate whether payment for oocytes inappropriately commodifies the human body, and ASRM policy consistently refers to their procurement as the “donation process” and to women who participate as “donors.” Nevertheless, in the context of antitrust law, the procurement of oocytes is a business and clearly falls within the reach of antitrust restrictions on business conduct. (shrink)

Malgré des changements législatifs "progressifs" concernant la communauté des lesbiennes, gays, bisexuels et transgenres et les technologies de reproduction assistée en Argentine, les femmes et leurs droits sexuels et reproductifs ont été négligés. Cet article présente une perspective critique de certaines de ces modifications législatives dans le pays. Il explique pourquoi certains législateurs et membres de la société sont prêts à défier une approche conservatrice, voire traditionnelle, pour certains groupes tout en ignorant les autres. Plusieurs facteurs sont en jeu. (...) Il n'y a pas une seule explication. Je souligne qu'un double standard frappant prévaut en Argentine en ce qui concerne les femmes et leurs droits sexuels et reproductifs. Je soutiens également qu'il existe une discrimination puissante, en particulier contre les femmes pauvres, qui continuent de souffrir et d'être "punies" à travers la criminalisation de l'avortement. (shrink)

Cet article discute la manière dont les théories féministes de la reproduction ont conduit à entretenir et renouveler les discussions portant sur les meilleures manières de théoriser et de critiquer l’exploitation du travail au sein des sociétés capitalistes. Dans un premier temps, il remonte à Marx et à la manière dont Le Capital pose le problème de la reproduction de la force de travail sans l’associer à celui d’un travail reproductif. Dans un deuxième temps, il analyse la manière (...) dont les théories féministes de la reproduction sociale ont développé à partir des années 1970 une théorie de l’exploitation du travail domestique, conçu comme travail de reproduction, par le capitalisme. Dans un troisième temps, il propose une discussion critique de la manière dont les développements plus récents des théories féministes de la reproduction sociale ont élargi le concept de reproduction sociale et le déconnectant parfois des problématiques du travail et de son exploitation. (shrink)

A simple molecular system is described consisting of the reciprocal linkage between an autocatalytic cycle and a self-assembling encapsulation process where the molecular constituents for the capsule are products of the autocatalysis. In a molecular environment sufficiently rich in the substrates, capsule growth will also occur with high predictability. Growth to closure will be most probable in the vicinity of the most prolific autocatalysis and will thus tend to spontaneously enclose supportive catalysts within the capsule interior. If subsequently disrupted in (...) the presence of new substrates, the released components will initiate production of additional catalytic and capsule components that will spontaneously re-assemble into one or more autocell replicas, thereby reconstituting and sometimes reproducing the original. In a diverse molecular environment, cycles of disruption and enclosure will cause auto-cells to incidentally encapsulate other molecules as well as reactive substrates. To the extent that any captured molecule can be incorporated into the autocatalytic process by virtue of structural degeneracy of the catalytic binding sites, the altered autocell will incorporate the new type of component into subsequent replications. Such altered autocells will be progenitors of “lineages” with variant characteristics that will differentially propagate with respect to the availability of commonly required substrates. Autocells are susceptible to a limited form of evolution, capable of leading to more efficient, more environmentally fitted, and more complex forms. This provides a simple demonstration of the plausibility of open-ended reproduction and evolvability without self-replicating template molecules or maintenance of persistent nonequilibrium chemistry. This model identifies an intermediate domain between prebiotic and biotic systems and bridges the gap from nonequilibrium thermodynamics to life. (shrink)

English-speaking research on morally right decisions in a healthcare context over the past three decades has been dominated by two major perspectives, namely, the Four Principles, of which the principle of respect for autonomy has been most salient, and the ethic of care, often presented as a rival to not only a focus on autonomy but also a reliance on principles more generally. In my contribution, I present a novel ethic applicable to bioethics, particularly as it concerns human procreation, that (...) I argue is a promising alternative to these two approaches. According to this new moral theory, an act is right just insofar as it treats people’s capacity to commune with respect, where communing is a matter of identifying with others and exhibiting solidarity with them. This ethic is inspired by relational ideals of communion and harmony from the African philosophical tradition, but is shown to be attractive to a broad, indeed global, audience, with regard to its implications for the morality of reproduction. (shrink)

Procreative obligations are often discussed by evaluating only the consequences of reproductive actions or omissions; less attention is paid to the moral role of intentions and attitudes. In this paper, I assess whether intentions and attitudes can contribute to defining our moral obligations with regard to assisted reproductive technologies already available, such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and those that may be available in future, such as reproductive genome editing and ectogenesis, in a way compatible with person‐affecting constraints. I propose (...) the parent–child relationship argument, which is based on the moral distinction between creating and parenting a child. Hence, I first argue that intentions and attitudes can play a role in defining our moral obligations in reproductive decisions involving PGD. Second, I maintain that if we accept this and recognize reproductive genome editing and ectogenesis as person‐affecting procedures, we should be committed to arguing that prospective parents may have moral reasons to prefer reproduction via such techniques than via sexual intercourse. In both cases, I observe an extension of our procreative responsibility beyond what is proposed by the consequentialist person‐affecting morality. (shrink)

This is a retrospective of surrogacy in Israel in the context of medically assisted reproduction. The practice of surrogacy emerged in the 1980s, suggesting a radical view of women as autonomous reproductive agents free from double standards of patriarchy. In 1995 Israel enacted a law that regulated domestic surrogacy for the benefit of infertile married women in accord with orthodox views of halakha. In recent years we see the growth of inter-country practices catering to otherwise ineligible intended parents, and (...) a demand for posthumous male reproduction. Meanwhile, women become objects of intrusive medical procedures and commodities of a global market, more often than not for the benefit of others rather than themselves. Yet the essence of human reproduction remains relational, and calls for care and responsibility. (shrink)

Common hospital and surgical center responses to the Covid‐19 pandemic included curtailing “elective” procedures, which are typically determined based on implications for physical health and survival. However, in the focus solely on physical health and survival, procedures whose main benefits advance components of well‐being beyond health, including self‐determination, personal security, economic stability, equal respect, and creation of meaningful social relationships, have been disproportionately deprioritized. We describe how female reproduction‐related procedures, including abortion, surgical sterilization, reversible contraception devices and in vitro (...) fertilization, have been broadly categorized as “elective,” a designation that fails to capture the value of these procedures or their impact on women's overall well‐being. We argue that corresponding restrictions and delays of these procedures are problematically reflective of underlying structural views that marginalize women's rights and interests and therefore threaten to propagate gender injustice during the pandemic and beyond. Finally, we propose a framework for triaging reproduction‐related procedures during Covid‐19 that is more individualized, accounts for their significance for comprehensive well‐being, and can be used to inform resumption of operations as well as subsequent restriction phases. (shrink)

In this paper I begin by arguing that there are significant intellectual and normative continuities between pre-Victorian hereditarianism and later Victorian eugenical ideologies. Notions of mental heredity and of the dangers of transmitting hereditary ‘taints’ were already serious concerns among medical practitioners and laymen in the early nineteenth century. I then show how the Victorian period witnessed an increasing tendency for these traditional concerns about hereditary transmission and the integrity of bloodlines to be projected onto the level of national health. (...) Tracing the gradual emergence of eugenical thought, I also highlight some of the more fundamental social, political and intellectual factors that promoted this predilection for extrapolating from the individual lineage to the nation and race. In doing so I argue that fully fledged eugenical thought was always unlikely to emerge prior to the early Victorian period. However, I am also able to show that Francis Galton's 1865 eugenical proposals were far from innovative and that identifying him as the ‘father’ of the eugenics movement is highly misleading. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the standard assumption that ethical disagreements on abortion and human embryonic stem cells research are grounded on metaphysical claims that underlie these ethical issues. Contrary to what some philosophers have claimed, I argue that, although the bioethical positions about the human embryo’s moral status are partly grounded on metaphysical claims, incorporating metaphysical arguments in the debates about the ethics of reproduction will not resolve this issue.

Using critical discourse analysis this study analyzes how ideologies and national identities are discursively constructed through editorial and opinion commentaries in two English-language newspapers from China and Japan on an international incident involving the two countries. The first four editorials/opinions on the East China Sea trawler collision incident from the China Daily and Daily Yomiuri are analyzed. Findings show that a variety of discursive strategies are adopted by the newspapers to construct national identity and intergroup relations, including: 1) the discursive (...) categorization of group identity, 2) the discursive re-categorization of intergroup relations, and 3) the discursive re-categorization of intragroup relations. Even though both newspapers are products of globalization, and purport to target international and cosmopolitan audiences, the reporting of the East China Sea incident closely adheres to official narratives and discourses of the respective governments. (shrink)

What explains the unexpected, uneven, but unquestionably pervasive trend toward re-familialization in the rich OECD countries? The usual arguments about political responses to rising income inequality, unstable families, and unstable employment predicted that the state would increasingly shelter people against risk, producing greater individuation and de- rather than re-familialization. By contrast, we argue three things. First, re-familialization has replaced de-familialization. Second, unequal access to housing drives a large part of re-familialization. Rather than becoming more “Anglo-Nordic,” countries are becoming more “southern (...) European” in the way that younger cohorts access housing. Third, this inequality-driven insecurity and unequal access is felt differently not only between generational cohorts but also within cohorts. (shrink)

In their target article, Jeff McMahan and Julian Savulescu (2024) deploy careful metaphysical analysis in defending significant normative theses—a relative rarity in the bioethics literature. The a...

The past few years have brought significant breakthroughs in understanding human genetics. This knowledge has been used to develop ‘polygenic scores’ (or ‘polygenic risk scores’) which provide probabilistic information about the development of polygenic conditions such as diabetes or schizophrenia. They are already being used in reproduction to select for embryos at lower risk of developing disease. Currently, the use of polygenic scores for embryo selection is subject to existing regulations concerning embryo testing and selection. Existing regulatory approaches include (...) ‘disease-based' models which limit embryo selection to avoiding disease characteristics (employed in various formats in Australia, the UK, Italy, Switzerland and France, among others), and 'laissez-faire' or 'libertarian' models, under which embryo testing and selection remain unregulated (as in the USA). We introduce a novel 'Welfarist Model' which limits embryo selection according to the impact of the predicted trait on well-being. We compare the strengths and weaknesses of each model as a way of regulating polygenic scores. Polygenic scores create the potential for existing embryo selection technologies to be used to select for a wider range of predicted genetically influenced characteristics including continuous traits. Indeed, polygenic scores exist to predict future intelligence, and there have been suggestions that they will be used to make predictions within the normal range in the USA in embryo selection. We examine how these three models would apply to the prediction of non-disease traits such as intelligence. The genetics of intelligence remains controversial both scientifically and ethically. This paper does not attempt to resolve these issues. However, as with many biomedical advances, an effective regulatory regime must be in place as soon as the technology is available. If there is no regulation in place, then the market effectively decides ethical issues. (shrink)

Drawing on feminist philosophical accounts of reproduction and initial data acquired through research with migrant mothers in London, this article argues that the role and place of reproduction remains under-theorized within scholarly accounts of women's role in migration processes. Working with an expanded concept of reproduction that includes not only childbirth and motherhood, but also the work of reproducing heritage, culture and structures of belonging, it argues that feminist migration scholars can draw on valuable theoretical resources in (...) order to tell more complicated stories about the place of reproduction in migration, and challenge the often problematic gendered distinctions between travelling and staying put, change and repetition that continue to underpin some of the narrative structures operative in migration studies. (shrink)

Based on in-depth interview data and popular culture texts, the current study has explored the politics of reproduction revolving around women’s age in contemporary China. Conceptualizing reproduction as a site of contestation and politics between different, and often contradictory, sets of discourses and power structures, I pursue a feminist and social constructivist analysis of the politics of reproduction in the lives of a group of urban professional women who are yet to enter motherhood at their late 20s (...) and 30s. I engage with Inhorn’s concept of ‘disrupted reproduction’ to highlight the politically, morally and emotionally charged contestations in the ‘problematized’ reproductive lives of these women. I unveil how Chinese professional women beyond their ‘reproductive prime’ are discursively constructed as ‘disrupters’, who fail their femininity test tied to a motherhood identity within the family context, challenge the ‘natural’ biological law regulating their reproductive bodies, and face a doomed reproductive future fraught with medical, physical and emotional traumas which ART cannot alleviate. Such a discourse renders invisible the structural causes of problems and challenges professional women face in negotiating parenthood, social norms and selfhood, which systematically put them under pervasive social surveillance and discipline. (shrink)

This paper analyzes recent attempts to reject reproduction with lineage formation as a necessary condition for evolution by means of natural selection :560–570, 2008; Stud Hist Philos Sci Part C Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci 42:106–114, 2011; Bourrat in Biol Philos 29:517–538, 2014; Br J Philos Sci 66:883–903, 2015; Charbonneau in Philos Sci 81:727–740, 2014; Doolittle and Inkpen in Proc Natl Acad Sci 115:4006–4014, 2018). Building on the strengths of these attempts and avoiding their pitfalls, it is argued (...) that a robust formulation of evolution by natural selection without reproduction can be established. The main contribution of this paper is a reformulation of Lewontin’s three principles stating that minimal evolution by natural selection occurs when two conditions are met in a population: fitness-related variation and memory. Paradigmatic evolution by natural selection, which can generate adaptations, takes place when an additional condition is present, namely regeneration. (shrink)

This article examines the place of reproduction in the UK migration policy popularly known as ‘the hostile environment’, introduced in 2012 by the Conservative–Lib Dem Coalition government, and the ‘Windrush scandal’ that followed. In order to think through how the reproductive sphere comes in to play in this policy and its consequences, I draw on theoretical insights from the work of Christina Sharpe and Saidiya Hartman, both of whom invite us to reflect on the ways in which the afterlife (...) of enslavement and empire continues to impinge on the status of Black subjects, and the ways in which our notions of the maternal, reproduction, kinship and belonging are entangled in this process. I begin by examining the place of the reproductive sphere in the hostile environment policy itself, before moving on to discuss the Windrush scandal and the ways in which it can be seen as an attack on the reproductive needs of its victims. I then consider these findings further through an engagement with the work of Sharpe and Hartman, arguing that the scandal reveals ways in which we continue to live ‘in the wake’ of racialised understandings of the reproductive that mean that some people are refused the possibilities of attachment and affiliation, so that, in Hartman's words, theirs is ‘the perilous condition of existing in a world in which you have no investment’. In the final section, I respond to Sharpe's call for white people to ‘rend the fabric of the kinship narrative’ that produces these exclusionary terms of belonging and permits the repetition of such brutalities as the hostile environment. (shrink)

This article reads the uptake of facial-matching algorithms by fertility clinics in Spain through the lens of ‘the fertility fix’: a software fix to the social reconfiguration of kinship and a fixed capital investment made by competing fertility companies and firms. ‘The fertility fix’ is proposed as a critical, ethical lens through which to situate algorithmic facial-matching in assisted reproduction in the context of the racial politics of the face and phenotype and the spatial politics of market expansion. While (...) an ‘infertility crisis’ is often mentioned when explaining the growth of the assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) industry, the use of donated reproductive cells is tied up in societal, ecological and economic shifts. Combining Software Studies analysis with Marxist Feminist and trans*feminist perspectives on shifting re/production dynamics, the article details the role of computational technologies in promoting certain ideas and beliefs about family and fixing certain territories of capital flow. (shrink)

This paper aims to argue for the thesis that it is not a priori morally justified that the first phase of space colonisation is based on sexual reproduction. We ground this position on the argument that, at least in the first colonisation settlements, those born in space may not have a good chance of having a good life. This problem does not depend on the fact that life on another planet would have to deal with issues such as solar (...) radiation or with the decrease or entire absence of the force of gravity. These issues could plausibly be addressed given that the planets or settlements we will feasibly colonise could be completely transformed through geoengineering processes. Likewise, the ability of humans to live in space could be enhanced through genetic modification interventions. Even if, however, the problems concerning survival in space were solved, we think that, at least in the first period of colonisation of space or other planets, giving birth to children in space could be a morally irresponsible choice since we argue, the life we ​​could give them might not be good enough. We contend that this is the case since when we decide to have a baby. We argue that it is not morally right to be content that our children have a minimally sufficient life worth living; before we give birth to children in space, we should make sure we can give them a reasonable chance of having a good life. This principle applies both on Earth - at least where you can choose - and for space travel. (shrink)

This Bioethics and Biopolitics: Presents and Futures of Reproduction symposium draws together a series of articles that were each submitted independently by their authors to the JBI and which explore the biopower axis in the externalization of reproduction in four contexts: artificial gestation, PGD for sex selection, women’s rights, and testicular cryopreservation. While one contribution explores a “future” of reproduction, the other three explore a “present,” or better, explore different “presents.” What may counts as “present,” and what (...) may count as “future,” has dramatically different connotations depending on the geographical declination of the tense. (shrink)

While working on the Italian translation of Life Death, I became aware of some inaccuracies on Derrida’s part that might weaken the effectiveness of his deconstruction of the notion of ‘reproduction’. Not only, such inaccuracies seem to lead Derrida’s interpretation of reproduction toward a conception of ‘life’ that might even hint at an undeconstructed metaphysical background. I have already dealt with such inaccuracies in detail in two articles published in French, here I will recall their outcomes in order (...) to try to test the most problematic hypothesis they have led me to formulate: the Derridean conception of ‘life’ implies a metaphysical background. (shrink)

This study explores the discourse of social entrepreneurs and their audiences in pitch situations. Adopting a practice perspective on social entrepreneurship, we videotaped 49 pitches by social entrepreneurs at five different events in two incubators in Germany and Switzerland. Our analysis of the start-ups’ pitches and the audience’s questions and comments as well as of interview data elucidates the nuances of social and business discourse that social entrepreneurs and their audiences draw upon. Our analysis shows how many social entrepreneurs mobilize (...) a discursive repertoire that is familiar to their business-oriented audience while others predominantly draw on a social discourse. We identify separating, mixing, and combining as key strategies that allow social entrepreneurs to dance between the two. We discuss how the intertextual reproduction of concepts, objects, and subject positions contains both enabling and constraining elements, which results in an ethical dilemma for social entrepreneurs: Should they re-package their social impact story in a business discourse to connect with their audience? (shrink)