Date of Award

5-2023

Document Type

Final Project

Course Title

WSS 690 MA Final Project

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Chair

Rajani Bhatia

Second Reader

Elise Andaya

Abstract

This paper sheds light on how Taiwanese egg donors and recruitment agencies engage with the transnational fertility industry. Taiwan, as a popular sending country of Asian ethnic egg donors to the US, has fostered a vibrant digital community consisting of egg donation agencies, agents, and previous and intended donors. Recruitment agencies employ social media to recruit donors by constructing carefree, easy, and highly rewarded narratives of cross-border donation trips. Donors utilize anonymous group chats and public forums to exchange information and manage the physical and mental risks within the donation process. Through a narrative analysis, I identified common patterns of these donation trips, and recognized the bioavailability (Cohen 2007) of Taiwanese donors and their efforts to reverse the disadvantage. By looking into the narratives constructed by recruitment agencies and donors, we can understand how the global egg market seeks to recruit Taiwanese donors through social media campaigns and how these donors engage with the global fertility industry.

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