Introduction

This article presents the special issue whose aim is to provide a critical analysis of the development of ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies) through a comparative investigation of different empirical studies in some countries in Europe, Africa and the USA (Italy, Belgium, Portugal, France, Netherlands, Algeria, Mozambique and California). The authors investigate the impact of ART on social and family structures, gender relationships, parenting and parenthood, and legal and political approaches through different perspectives: the medicalization of human reproduction and gender differences, and the politics of ART.
In this perspective ART is intended as a crossroad of analysis in which different disciplinary areas and geopolitical contexts interact, in order to investigate the impact of ART on legal and policy issues, on reproductive culture, on family structures, on gender and on generational relationships. The theoretical and empirical approaches draw on to the sociology of health, gender studies, medical anthropology, public health and kinship studies. In addition, in this special issue the critical analysis of ART is developed through three main topics: gender, biomedicine and inequality.
The questions behind this volume concern the aspects that are still central in the national and international debate: reproductive and individual rights; social inequalities that intersect with gender and health inequalities; the development of biomedicine and biotechnologies and their impact on social change affecting gender and generational relationships, family structures, law and policies; the space and time of reproduction, which is increasingly distant from physiological times and traditional private spaces.