Point Illustration Explanation Mini-conclusion Introduction Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a tour de force based on speculative dystopian fiction. In the novel, Atwood creates a society run by a theocratic government, and Handmaids are recruited to repopulate the sterility struck society. It was written in 1985 and is written in a first person limited narrative stance. The protagonist of the novel is a Handmaid named Offred.

A handmaid's tale.

英文EXPLOITATION与汉语的“剥削”不能构成互相对译的词汇。EXPLOITATION在英语中的原意是开发、开拓、利用；“剥削”在汉语中解释为“搜刮民财，荼毒天下”。这两个词原始语义不同，词汇的褒贬含义不同，所代表的善恶是非观念界限不同，作为一种社会现象和行为，其合法性和社会后果不同，在未来社会发展进程中的前景和结局不同。当今中国社会所存在的“剥削”是封建社会腐朽的官民关系的残余。EXPLOITATION如果以人为对象客体，则应该译成汉语的“人力资源开发利用”。

将exploitation译成“剥削”质疑

Gender inequality remains both a pressing social issue and a fruitful area of social science research. This edited volume seeks to examine gender inequality and the production of well-being in Europe from an interdisciplinary perspective that is perhaps more feminist economics than sociology. The chapters draw on historical and contemporary European examples and offer a somewhat different take (both theoretically and methodologically) on what is usually found in American sociology journals. This book takes a broader view on gender inequalities and the production of wellbeing, with the ‘‘capability approach’’ serving as the theoretical connection between the chapters. The chapters reemphasize that social reproduction is more complex than the production of goods. The various authors also call for and (in the empirical chapters) take into account the socio-political and economic context. An entire chapter is dedicated to the introduction of the capability approach (Chapter Two). But the description of the theory remains lacking amidst numerous references that point the reader towards clarification elsewhere. The authors posit that well-being is an important outcome, and that the production of well-being itself needs to be included in the study of gender inequality (Chapter One), while also demanding that women are not just another vulnerable group (Chapter Four). Chapter Three further challenges conventional notions about the evolution of the ‘‘modern family’’ in the wake of the industrialization process, and argues that the fragility of families is not a novel concept. These theoretical chapters call for a more multidimensional assessment of gender inequality, and remind readers of the importance of the concept and production of well-being. The topics covered in the two empirical parts of the book are very diverse in terms of subject, methodology, and historical time period. The first empirical section ‘‘Gender Care and Work’’ is held together by the challenge to the idea of women as passive victims and in need of assistance. Chapter Five demonstrates widows’ relative economic independence in urban Sweden and Finland from 1890 to 1910, and Chapter Six shows the centrality of female relatives in caring for extended family members in times of crisis. Chapter Seven reaffirms the idea that intergenerational support is not one-sided, and those often thought of as needing care due to older age are also givers of care and other forms of support. The findings from the chapters emphasize the importance of non-monetary transfers outside the market system. The theme of caregiving is readdressed in later chapters which illustrate how home caregiving in Belgium is situated between the public/market divide (Chapter Nine) and the problems of combining market work with caregiving, especially for those in the ‘‘sandwich generation’’ (Chapter Ten). In a seeming departure from studies in the capability approach tradition, Chapter Eight is a more typical time-use study that examines the gender asymmetry in unpaid labor in Italy. The results are not novel as women are found to do more unpaid work, especially in couples with children. The second empirical part of the book focuses on the intra-household allocation of resources. Three of the five chapters in this section center primarily on the nineteenth century, examining consumption patterns in Spain (Chapter 11), gender differences in children’s schooling in Switzerland (Chapter 12), and the differences in the treatment of and opportunities for celibate men and women in the Pyrenees (Chapter 13). These chapters illustrate gender differences, but not in

Managing the Margins: Gender, Citizenship, and the International Regulation of Precarious Employment

In Sex Cells, Rene Almeling describes in detail the market in what are euphemistically called donated eggs and sperm. She found gender differences not only in pay, but in the framing of the donation as a ‘‘gift’’ or a ‘‘job.’’ In the market for gametes, eggs are more highly valued than sperm; egg donation is considered a gift of life, while sperm donors are construed as doing a job for which they are paid. To Almeling, the frame is a gendered stereotype of women as ‘‘selfless, caring, and focused on relationships and family’’ (p. 131); they cannot be seen as selling babies, so their eggs are a ‘‘gift.’’ For sperm donors, the masculine oxymoron was in the juxtaposition of a pleasurable experience (masturbation) with a sometimes alienating job. Yet while sperm donors call themselves fathers and connect to the children born of their sperm, negating the female gestator and social parents, egg donors ‘‘are adamant that they are not mothers’’—the recipients are the mothers (p. 20). Almeling’s extensive, in-depth ethnographic research covers the economic, cultural, and structural organization of six donor programs through interviews with 45 staff members, observations of daily practices, and analysis of more than a thousand records. She also conducted 60to 90-minute interviews with 19 egg donors and 20 sperm donors ranging in age from 19 to 46. Sperm donation went from a medical service for infertile heterosexual married couples in the 1950s using fresh sperm, to a commercial enterprise where frozen sperm is sold increasingly to single women and lesbians. The AIDs epidemic in the 1980s increased the market for sperm that could be frozen and the donors tested for several months before it was used. With new in vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques for male infertility, there are fewer heterosexual married couples seeking sperm donation, so the target buyers increasingly are single women and lesbians. The large commercial sperm banks sell donors with profiles and ID releases to meet these clients’ demands. The egg donation programs that began in IVF clinics in the 1980s originally were a search for altruistic ‘‘earth mothers.’’ Psychological evaluations were used on the premise that altruism predicted honesty about medical information and compliance with the regimen of hormonal injections. Anonymity was discouraged; some recipients even recruited their own donors. The proliferation of IVF clinics and new techniques has increased the demand for donated eggs for women whose uteruses are intact but whose eggs are defective. There are many applications to be egg donors, but there is a high attrition rate. The ideal egg donor, according to agency staffs, is either a physically attractive college graduate or a caring mother. The ideal sperm donor is a tall college student with consistently high sperm counts. Agencies also look for ethnic, racial, and religious diversity, and may pay these donors more. The extensive testing that potential egg donors go through and the attrition rate reduce actual donors to 20 percent of the original pool. Sperm banks reject more than 90 percent of applicants, most on the basis of their sperm count. In the course of profiling, the actual sex cells (sperm, eggs) that are being sold turn into gendered people, even though few of the donors’ personality characteristics are inheritable. Egg donation involves self-administered injections of fertility drugs to stimulate egg production and surgical egg retrieval. In addition, the donors are monitored with blood tests and ultrasounds. They may have to travel to the recipient’s city, but sometimes that is a bonus vacation. Side effects can be severe or at the least, discomforting—hyperstimulation, infection, bleeding, anesthetic complications, and pain—but donors prepare themselves with discussions with medical professionals and online or library research. The majority (80 percent) were willing to undergo at least one more cycle; many planned to donate several more times. The donors get paid thousands of dollars no matter how many eggs they produce, but they usually Reviews 379

Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm

http://easts.dukejournals.org/content/10/3/329.full.pdf

Clinical Labor: Tissue Donors and Research Subjects in the Global Bioeconomy

In late 2012, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) announced that they would no longer consider oocyte cryopreservation (i.e., egg freezing) to be experimental. In their joint practice guideline, published in early 2013,[1

https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/187/9/666.full.pdf

Social egg freezing: risk, benefits and other considerations

While proponents of social (i.e., nonmedical) egg freezing argue that it is liberating for women, opponents contest that the technology provides an individualist solution to a social problem. This article comprises personal and academic reflections on the debate on social egg freezing from four young women studying reproductive technologies. We challenge the promotion of social egg freezing as an empowering option for women and question cultural assumptions about childbearing, the disclosure of risk, failures to consider sexual diversity and socioeconomic status, and the expansion of the market in reproductive tissues.

Breaking the ice: Young feminist scholars of reproductive politics reflect on egg freezing

Frozen in perpetuity: 'abandoned embryos' in Canada.

Th is article examines exploitation as a policy rationale for the prohibition of paid surrogacy and egg donation in Canada, focusing on claims of exploitation in parliamentary transcripts and proposed legislation. Its main focus is challenging three assumptions long used to substantiate the prohibition of commercial egg donation and surrogacy, namely: that marginalized women are being exploited; that payment and exploitation are necessarily linked; and that prohibitions on payment are the best means to prevent exploitation in assisted human reproduction. By examining these assumptions, this article assesses the legitimacy of prohibiting payment on the basis of perceived exploitation and suggests that, though much has been done to protect surrogates and donors, little is known about their real-life experiences with reproductive technologies, that the relationship between exploitation and payment is tenuous, and that it remains unclear that prohibiting payment is not doing more harm than good.

Risky Business: Surrogacy, Egg Donation, and the Politics of Exploitation

This article examines the relationship between social reproduction and reproductive technologies in Canada to interrogate the value in reconceiving egg donation as a form of labour, rather than as a matter of health. It argues that understanding egg donation as labour both highlights the potential for egg donors to be autonomous, agentic subjects within exploitative circumstances, and offers new possibilities for the governance of what has been, to date, a failed policy field.

Alana Cattapan

Papers

Social egg freezing: risk, benefits and other considerations

Breaking the ice: Young feminist scholars of reproductive politics reflect on egg freezing

Frozen in perpetuity: 'abandoned embryos' in Canada.

Risky Business: Surrogacy, Egg Donation, and the Politics of Exploitation

Precarious labour: on egg donation as work