Surrogacy is heavily promoted by the stagnating IVF industry which seeks new markets for women over 40, and gay men who believe they have a 'right' to their own children and 'family foundation'. Pro-surrogacy groups in rich countries such as Australia and Western Europe lobby for the shift to commercial surrogacy. Their capitalist neo-liberal argument is that a well-regulated fertility industry would avoid the exploitative practices of poor countries. Central to the project of transnationa...

Showing that a radical feminist analysis cuts across class, race, sexuality, region, and religion, the varied contributors in this collection reveal the global reach of radical feminism and analyze the causes and solutions to patriarchal oppression.

Originally published in 1984, when new reproductive technologies were just beginning to become part of the public discussion, this edition was published with a new preface in 1989. The Editors wanted to look carefully at how much real choice reproductive technologies offered to women. Genetic engineering, sperm banks, test tube fertilization, sex selection, surrogate mothering, experimentation in the so called ‘third world’, increased technological intervention in childbirth – were we taki...

Pared down to cold hard facts, surrogacy is the commissioning/buying/ renting of a woman into whose womb an embryo is inserted and who thus becomes a 'breeder' for a third party.Surrogacy is heavily promoted by the stagnating IVF industry which seeks new markets for women over 40, and gay men who believe they have a 'right' to their own children and 'family foundation'. Pro-surrogacy groups in rich countries such as Australia and Western Europe lobby for the shift to commercial sur...

A classic text for health activists and feminists interested in the complexities of how drugs are developed, marketed, and sold to women around the world, this book reviews the unusual history of the French abortion pill RU-486. Critical of the positive claims made for RU-486, it argues that its promotion is filled with myths and misconceptions. Scrutinizing the science and politics behind RU-486, this account examines how the pill benefits the medical profession, drug companies, and gover...

Family members, friends, coworkers and neighbors are often the first to know that a woman has been abused by an intimate male partner. What is the proper course of action for those with knowledge of abuse? Using a wide range of empirical data from international sources, Renate Klein documents informal third parties as the first port of call, sources of support and interference, and gatekeepers to formal services. Family and social network members disrupt ongoing assaults, respond to disclo...

With examples from throughout Europe and the United States, the contributors to this volume explore how gender violence is framed through language and what this means for research and policy. Language shapes responses to abuse and approaches to perpetrators and interfaces with national debates about gender, violence, and social change.

What was it like to participate in the Women's Liberation Movement? What made millions of women step forward from the 1960s onwards and join it in different ways? Many of the fifty women in this book were there. They describe how they have contributed in multitudinous ways across politics, the arts, health, education, environmentalism, economics and science and created wonderfully subversive activism. And how they continue this activism today with determined grittiness. Here are women – al...

An international anthology by feminists working in the fields of electronic publishing, activism, data delivery, multimedia games production, educational multimedia, the virtual campus and virtual reality creation, program development and electronic product, as well as those developing critiques of electronic culture, this collection explores what the possibilities are for feminists and for feminism in cyberspace.

Thousands of people obtain babies through surrogacy arrangements. The general public is compassionate to their plight and supportive of their 'right' to a baby. But who are the nameless women who give birth to these babies? In this book, strong and courageous women from the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, and Russia share their stories of becoming 'surrogate' mothers only to be deceived by 'baby buyers' and lawyers. This book challenges Big Fertility and its minions: women are not ovens or...

Originally published in 1989, Infertility looks at how fertility treatments fail women. At the time there was disturbing evidence of medical malpractice and invasive technologies which violated women’s bodies and took a heavy toll on their lives.Here for the first time, women – from all over the world – tell their own stories about: the pain and stigma of infertility; never-ending cycles of drugs and hormone injections; the trauma of the ‘test-tube baby’ method (IVF); thei...

Women’s Studies investigates the world from women-centred perspectives which cross the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines. Thus every issue, every question is material for Women’s Studies. The worldwide development of Women’s Studies during the 1970s and 1980s presented a radical challenge to the male-centred bias which dominated knowledge-making at the time.Originally published in 1983, in this book feminist scholars discuss the assumptions and aims of Women’s Studies,...