PARTONE:THEFEMALEFERTILITYMARKET ALEXEPSHTEIN

Then I saw the endless stream of comments under the advertisement, detailing the severity and hardships of the procedure. Egg retrieval without anaesthesia, hormone injections 6 weeks prior to the procedure, cramps for months afterwards. Suddenly that £800 no longer seemed worth it.

But still, why this sudden surge in marketing female fertility? Where was the male equivalent of advertisements? Would sperm donation not make them feel as empowered as women?

Perhaps because of their already established position in the labour market, men did not need to turn to their reproductive capabilities to earn a living. With gender equality and ‘empowerment’ recently becoming buzzwords in the media and the public sphere, while women are fighting for room in the workplace, their very being seems to be growing more and more entangled with the idea of maternity. This is clearly implied by this epidemic of advert campaigns promoting fertility testing, egg donation, and charitable donations to save ‘mothers’ rather than women. And so, standing on the platform waiting for my friend, I wondered where in history being a woman became synonymous with being a mother.

Alexepshtein

Let’s take a closer look at the kinds of adverts that inspired this series, and what thoughts their messages aim to debunk, provoke, or inspire.

One of the most prominent fertility campaigns is Hertility, a UK-based company that specializes in measuring female fertility, attempting to shed some light on the gender research gap more generally, as highlighted in their slogan in one of their many tubeposters: ‘mind the gender health gap.’

The ‘gender health gap’ relates to the skewed amount of clinical research conducted on men’s bodies versus females. Eight out of ten women have reported that they ‘do not feel listened to’ by healthcare professionals in the UK. This is reflected by the diagnosis rates of illnesses such as ADHD and autism, where 80% of women with either condition are likely to be misdiagnosed in their adolescence. Henceforth, this also has a major impact on women’s access to healthcare. When looking at reproductive health, these gender inequalities are once again exacerbated. With women already largely being dismissed for their symptoms by doctors, they are also 25% less likely to receive pain relief for surgeries and medical procedures than men, their pain often being dismissed as ‘emotional’, ‘psychogenic’, and ‘not real’, perpetuating negative stigma surrounding women’s pain in general. This leads to reportedly painful procedures such as cervical and endometrial biopsies, colposcopies, IUD insertions and more to be executed without anesthesia, where standard procedure advises women to just take some standard painkillers a few hours prior to the surgery.

Moreover, misdiagnosis and underdiagnosis rates for conditions as common as endometriosis, PCOS, breast and ovarian cancer are extremely high, reaching over 75% within the last three years. Multiple factors contribute to this problem, including the dismissal of women’s pain when reported and barriers to healthcare. Furthermore, these subjects are often not discussed in public spaces.