The business of assisted reproductive technologies: A research agenda

Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) provide women with the chance to conceive and become mothers. This chapter explores the system of governance surrounding fertility treatment in the UK. In this system, various societal actors act and interact to provide prospective and current patients with products, services, information and support. Business in particular can be involved as private clinics, pharmaceutical companies or other businesses related to reproductive health. However, fertility treatment is also closely related to social norms around gender and motherhood that are traditionally attributed to women, whose experiences are in turn often silenced. In this regard, reproductive technologies have been seen by feminist scholarship as either liberating or oppressive, but the role of business has seldom been analysed in relation to reproductive technologies and women. This chapter aims to provide business ethics scholars with avenues for future research highlighting the importance of concepts of power, knowledge and a feminist perspective for analyses in the area of business and society aimed at advancing gender equality.