Empowerment and subjugation: Re-conceiving commercial surrogacy as work–labor in India

ABSTRACT Feminist analysis of surrogacy remains caught between calls for abolition on the one hand, and regulation, on the other. Within this dualistic discourse, the question of recognizing commercial gestational surrogacy as a new form of work–labor remains undermined. This paper brings together the abolition-regulation conceptual framework to examine surrogacy as work–labor. Based on ethnographic research conducted in two surrogacy hotspots in India, it illustrates how women understand and construct meaning from their labor as surrogates. In doing so, the study extends the existing feminist framework, using ethnographic research, to open up a space where the labor of surrogacy can be looked upon as both empowering and subjugating at the same time and in differing ways.