From Sweatshops to Intimate Labor

Abstract

"This article tracks surrogate mothers’ wage labor trajectories in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. Women working in garment factories sell their eggs and become surrogate mothers, after which they cycle back to garment factories. I show that while women are exploited in the intimate industries, they do not necessarily feel disempowered. Perversely, deepening forms of bodily commodification are experienced as deliverance from social degradation. Many surrogate mothers describe their social degradation because of gender; they have weaker positions in the home, they earn lesser wages than their husbands, and they are sexually harassed on the garment shop floor. Yet, they explain that it is precisely because of their womanly bodies they can earn large sums of money in Bangalore’s reproduction industry. Their ability to bring capital facilitates their capacity to negotiate powerful positions in their extended households, and solidify their social positions."

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