Dr. Sheela Suryanarayanan, Associate Professor, Centre for Women’s Studies, School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad (UoH) spoke at the Goethe-Zentrum, Hyderabad on the Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India, on 28th July 2022 based on her study in 2009 and the follow-up study in 2019 with surrogate mothers in Gujarat. The session was moderated by Prof. Shahida Murtaza, Director at the Centre for Women’s Studies, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad.
With reference to feminists Gena Corea (1985) and Andrea Dworkin (1983), who have cautioned that commercial surrogacy market would move to the poorer countries in the third world for a lesser cost, Dr. Suryanarayanan analysed the present transnational surrogacy market movements that exactly follows post-colonial patterns of global inequalities. This racialized and classist body market treats women’s ‘body-space’ as ‘risky’, ‘polluting’ and ‘discardable’. She spoke about the economic, health and emotional impact of commercial surrogacy on surrogate mothers and their children in India. She brought out important intersectionalities of religion, caste, skin colour, alcoholism and indebtedness that play a role in the surrogacy experience.