Digital pregnancy through domestic objects : creation of debate around the topic of surrogacy through creation of speculative domestic objects

Abstract

Pregnancy or career - that's a question many women face as they progress with their professional careers. In the high tech industry, driven female professionals often choose to pursue their careers in lieu of having children. For many of them, strategies of surrogacy or freezing eggs are popular options not only because of available technological advancements but also because of shifts in cultural perspective enabled by a new biotechnical regime. The dichotomy that forces an "either-or" divide between motherhood and careership can be seen as a modern form of regulatory control on women. The question of reproduction becomes a matter of our bio-techno-capitalist society as a confine of women's options, voices, and freedom. Companies such as Facebook and Apple have recently offered to pay female employees to freeze their eggs so they can continue with their careers, without interrupting their dreams of having children. In addition, companies in India offer outsourced surrogacy services for U.S. couples who can afford to pay, services that are contingent upon the poverty class that needs additional income. The female employees who are now freezing their eggs in Silicon Valley may very well be choosing this surrogacy option fifteen years down the line. However, there still remains many ethical, social and political dilemmas which exist with surrogacy, questions that must be posed to the public. My thesis intends to inspire those discussions through critical speculative design. Women who choose to delay reproduction to stay in the American capitalistic workforce is an obvious economic advantage for the corporate machine, but are women - both the employees and surrogates - being unethically exploited in this capitalistic arrangement?