Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs.
Date: Wednesday 20 March 2024 1:00pm - 2:00pm
Venue: ART-25WWC-C120/121
Zoom link: https://macquarie.zoom.us/j/82519073926?pwd=V3Y2M0VuVzRWL3lmTStmanR1ZVZSZz09
Speaker: Professor Marcia Inhorn
Moderator: Christopher Houston
Discipline: Anthropology
Abstract
Why are women freezing their eggs in record numbers? Contrary to media reports, which suggest that women’s career ambitions are the main determinant of women’s fertility postponement, women themselves offer different explanations for their fertility preservation. The growing momentum toward egg freezing masks an underlying but little discussed global reality—namely, a mating gap, in which women in the United States and more than half the world’s nations (including Australia) are outperforming men in higher education, resulting in the lack of eligible, educated, and equal partners with whom to pursue marriage and childbearing. Although egg freezing been touted for its “revolutionary” potential, it is a costly technological concession to growing gender inequalities, whereby educated women are “buying time” while experiencing reproductive partnership problems beyond their individual control.
Bio
Marcia C. Inhorn, PhD, MPH, is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at Yale University. A medical anthropologist specializing in gender, religion, and reproductive health issues, Inhorn has conducted research on the social impact of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies over the past 35 years. She is the author of seven books on the subject. Her latest book, Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs (NYU Press, 2023), is based on a US National Science Foundation study of 150 American women who undertook egg freezing to preserve their fertility, primarily due to reproductive partnership problems.