Surrogacy in Ukraine

Discover the fourth session of the 2025–2026 seminar series "Crossed Perspectives on Early Childhood" – "Surrogacy in Ukraine: Emergence, Organisation, and Experiences of Reproductive Labour".

The seminar approaches early childhood as a social, historical, and cultural construct. Knowledge and theories relating to conception, birth, and child development are analysed in terms of the child’s interactions with their surroundings and according to gender norms. The seminar also explores the boundaries of this age category and its temporality, as defined by medical, international, anthropological, and historical standards.

Authorised in Ukraine from 2002 until the outbreak of the war in 2014, surrogacy developed into a thriving industry structured around agencies, specialised clinics, and a pool of women recruited for their ability to carry a child for others. This presentation draws on ethnographic research conducted in 2012–2013 in Lviv, Kyiv, and several other regions of the country. It examines the socio-economic and cultural conditions that facilitated the emergence of this market, particularly in relation to women’s professional trajectories in post-Soviet Ukraine. The session will then explore recruitment procedures, selection criteria, the rules imposed on women, and the control techniques employed by agencies, as well as the ways some women navigated or circumvented these constraints. Finally, it will consider the women’s lived experiences: how they engage with this activity, manage the accompanying stigma, and redefine their relationship with their bodies, motherhood, and reproductive labour.

• Delphine Lance: Anthropologist, PhD from EHESS, Paris.
• Discussant: Doris Bonnet: Emeritus Anthropologist (IRD, Ceped)