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July 13, 2012 Rene Almeling's book Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm (University of California Press), has been awarded the 2012 Diana Forsythe Prize. The prize, given annually to “the best book on gender, work, science, technology, and medicine,” is jointly awarded by two sections of the American Anthropological Association. In announcing the award, the prize committee commended Almeling's ”deep, yet accessible analysis of the gendered work of gamete donation among both young women and young men in America who are responding to a commercial market for their sex cells. The book is theoretically framed, ethnographically compelling, and accessible to broad audiences“
September 20, 2011 Professor Rene Almeling has published Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm. Unimaginable until the twentieth century, the clinical practice of transferring eggs and sperm from body to body is now the basis of a bustling market. In Sex Cells, Professor Almeling provides an inside look at how egg agencies and sperm banks do business. Although both men and women are usually drawn to donation for financial reasons, she finds that clinics encourage sperm donors to think of the payments as remuneration for an easy "job." Women receive more money but are urged to regard egg donation in feminine terms, as the ultimate "gift" from one woman to another. Sex Cells shows how the gendered framing of paid donation, as either a job or a gift, not only influences the structure of the market, but also profoundly affects the individuals whose genetic material is being purchased.
Press coverage links online: The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Newsweek, NPR, Yale.
More information is available from the University of California Press http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520270961.
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