Framing the Labor of Paid Egg Donors in Iran: Marginality, Gendered Care, and Divine Reward

Abstract

Despite the economic incentives evidenced in the recruitment strategies of the Iranian fertility industry for egg donors, the official discourse put forward by policymakers conveys egg donation as an altruistic act. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in two fertility clinics in Tehran, I center the narratives of paid egg donors to investigate how multiple meanings are attributed to egg donation as a form of labor, demonstrating how reproductive inequalities are perpetuated in this context. Following feminist theorists of reproductive bioeconomies, I argue that Iranian donors experience and articulate their participation in local egg market through the prism of their economic marginality, gendered responsibilities, and religiously informed beliefs, including divine reward.