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  • The Commodification of Women's Bodies in Trafficking for Prostitution and Egg Donation
  • Liliana Acero (bio)

In her paper "Border disputes across bodies: Exploitation in trafficking for prostitution and egg sale for stem cell research," Heather Widdows argues that international feminism has been affected adversely by the polarization of debates, that conflicting understandings of exploitation have been obscured by debates on choice and autonomy, and that we must "revisit" some older categories of feminist analysis to reflect upon and take a coherently feminist stance on current practices of egg donation and trafficking for prostitution. This challenging and richly argued paper raises a number of issues. This response discusses four main themes from the paper.

First, the author's paper is largely a call not to forget insights from one main framework among feminists' critical elaborations of Marxism—that developed by Pateman (1988), according to whom gender subordination is closely related to the multiple ways in which female labor power is exploited.

If we adopt Pateman's perspective, another conceptual distinction that is still relevant can be renewed: the distinction between practical and strategic gender [End Page 25] needs and/or interests (Moser 1989, 1803). This distinction has been especially useful in understanding or assessing various projects designed to address the gender equity needs of women within Third World countries, specifically the uneven processes of capitalist accumulation within these countries (WHO 1998, 42; Buvinic et. al. 2006, 115; Doyal 2005, 9). The distinction refers to the objective (versus subjective) aims or results of processes, strategies, and actions, directed to one or both sexes, and their actual and potential effects on gender relations.

Practical gender needs focus on, for example, the health needs of women and men within their socially accepted roles in society, without attempting to modify gender inequities. A practical gender approach to planning would aim to improve the health of men or women, because it identifies their differential roles and responsibilities. It would attempt to tailor efficient responses to their present situation in specific contexts, namely, providing tools, resources, and means that do not aim to change broader gender inequities.

In contrast, strategic gender needs imply a more integral response, responding to the concrete health needs of men and women and at the same time aiming at redistributing their roles, responsibilities, and power, so as to reduce inequities that harm health and increase exposure to risk (Group on Gender and Health 1998, chapter 5, step 3). Although approaches based on practical gender needs involve a set of measures, policies, or behaviors that could support and better the life of women in the short term, they do not resolve gender subordination or examine its causes. Addressing practical gender needs can indirectly improve unequal distribution of and access to resources along gender lines, for example, toward the satisfaction of the vital needs of nutrition, housing, quality of life of women and their children, and reproductive labor of all forms: cultural, social, and sexual. Measures would involve, for example, supporting selected maternal/child health programs and family planning strategies (Acero 2005, 160). Approaches based on strategic gender needs involve those measures that would better support women's struggles in both the short and long run toward ending gender subordination and entail deeper political changes and fair participatory governance.

Widdows adopts a strategic-gender perspective. In both case studies analyzed, her arguments provide key elements to evaluate how far and in what particular ways social practices are far from fulfilling strategic gender needs. Instead, they show that some practices worsen women's subordination in a number of ways, all of which entail the commodification of their bodies.

The feminists and ethicists discussed in the paper base their positions on trafficking and egg donation on different assumptions that they believe are relevant [End Page 26] to the fulfilment of specific practical gender needs. The discussion on prostitution, "non-coercive trafficking" for prostitution, and egg donation for research usually revolves around the idea that these practices satisfy a rightful need among poorer women for monetary compensation, income, or a mere job. As the author notes, they are taken as "a better option than none." However, the debates seem to underplay the existence of a necessary...

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