What Are Women Worth?

In the wake of International Women's Day 2008, I learned through news stories around the United States that as a high-end prostitute, I could make $5,500 an hour. So, I did the math. For one day as a high-end prostitute, just one day, just 8 hours, I could actually make more money than I will this entire year at my job – a job I love. As a woman, knowing that my value, as society would have it, lies in my body ... Well, that’s a hard pill to swallow.

I’ve heard the arguments before – the arguments that say, “Who is using who here?” and “Those wily women are the ones using the system – look at how much money they're making!” Yes, they're making a lot of money – tons, in fact. Say they decided to work one day a week for the entire year – just one day a week, at 44,000 a day – well, they would cash in at $2,228,000 for a year's work. Not a bad sum of money for working one day a week, I admit.

But here is the thing. What that says to women, all women, is that the most valuable thing they can do, the thing that is worth the most – is their body. The same holds true for strippers. They are not the ones that hold the cards – they are participating in a society-wide presumption that ultimately values their body far more than their mind. And that is extremely problematic. Every time an intelligent woman makes the choice to strip, or to escort, or to prostitute herself, she is reinforcing society’s decision to value her body above all other things. She is making it harder for women like me, women who could choose the route of a body-for-money trade, but who fight that choice, and the resulting social values it enforces.

And, there is more to this story, this story of women’s bodies.

A new phenomenon has emerged in recent months, a phenomenon that puts an alternative price on women’s bodies. It’s the outsourcing of birth, and, like prostitution, like stripping, it tells women that their ultimate worth lies in their bodies. But it goes one step further – it tells some women, like the women in India who are carrying surrogate babies, that they are worth less than the high-end prostitute.

Let’s do the math again. A high-end, western prostitute makes a little over $5,000 an hour. A low-end Indian surrogate, at $7,000 a pop, 9 months of full-time work, 24 hours a day (and, I think we can agree, pregnancy is full time) … that comes down to about $6.50 an hour.

So, what I’m learning, through the prices of prostitution and surrogacy, is not only do we value women for their bodies – we value some women’s bodies far more than others. If you are western, and cater to the New York governor, we will pay you! Your body is worth a lot! But, if you are Indian (sorry!), the best we can offer you is a 9-month minimum-wage job.

Is being paid to carry someone else’s baby the same as being paid to sleep with someone? Well, no … But both acts turn the women in either situation into little more than a physical entity. And that’s the problematic thing.

It’s tragic, what we are saying to women, not just here, but all over the world. All financial arguments fall flat in the face of the larger societal impact – the one that tells women that their value, their ultimate worth, lies in their ability to bodily and sexually serve society. So the question, at least for me, is, how do we create the shift to a society where the mind matters more than the chromosome?