Fertility Governance Through Cascaded Accountability: Building Inclusive Safety Nets for Vulnerable Workers

Abstract

This article examines how workplace fertility governance operates as a system of control, consent, and inequality shaped by organizational, cultural, and institutional forces. Drawing on feminist theory, we develop a multilevel framework of cascading accountability that integrates symbolic violence, biopolitics, chrononormativity, and postfeminist agency to analyze how corporate fertility benefits simultaneously expand and constrain reproductive autonomy. Using feminist thematic analysis of media coverage, corporate materials, digital lived experiences, and independent reports, we show how fertility support schemes reinforce normative timelines, managerial control, and affective expectations, particularly for structurally marginalized groups such as migrants, LGBTQ+ workers, and racialized minorities. Throughout this paper, fertility governance is treated not as a women's issue per se but as a system regulating reproductive capacity across differently gendered bodies, including cisgender, transgender, and nonbinary workers. Theoretically, we synthesize Bourdieu's and Foucault's insights with feminist critiques to demonstrate how reproductive governance unfolds across macro, meso, and micro levels. Practically, we argue for a shift from discretionary benefits to rights-based policies grounded in reproductive justice, centering the lived experiences of those whose reproductive needs fall outside normative models.