Women and Gender

Smith: Companies should offer family benefits beyond egg freezing

Facebook and Apple are now offering female employees egg-freezing benefits to entice talented workers to work longer. This is a sticky situation for women. It is cause for celebration, but also a cause for concern.

Facebook and Apple are two of the first companies in America to offer this benefit. Because of this, it is important to weigh the benefits with the shortcomings, as other companies may follow suit. After all, egg freezing does not always result in a successful pregnancy and it only delays a woman’s decision to have children. It’s good that companies are offering women the opportunity to freeze their eggs, but to truly benefit all women in the workplace, they need to ensure that family planning benefits continue beyond conception.

The process of egg freezing involves a series of shots before the operation to stimulate the ovaries and eggs followed by a 15–20 minute operation.  An embryologist can collect around 12 eggs in one session with a needle and then freeze the collected eggs in liquid nitrogen for up to 10 years according to a Daily Mail research article.

Most successful pregnancies from egg freezing occur between the ages of 20–30 — women younger than 38 years old that choose to freeze their eggs only have a 2–12 percent chance that one frozen egg will yield a baby in the future, and as they get older, the egg quality decreases along with the pregnancy rate, according to Reproductive Facts.org. These statistics are much more daunting than what tech companies want women to know. Egg freezing might appeal to younger women, but it seems to have an expiration date for older women who want to start a family.

Though it has benefits, egg freezing is also only encouraging the delay of parenthood, and could put pressure on women to wait to have kids to avoid missing out on career advancement. Companies hope to harness employees’ prime childbearing time for work and profit, which is understandable from a business standpoint. But corporations should consider that there are alternatives that would make it easier for women to have children any time in their career without it causing a loss in productivity.



Offering on-site childcare, flextime and telecommuting are much more approachable than an egg retrieval with multiple injections.

On-site childcare would allow parents to put all of their efforts into their work, instead of worrying about their child’s safety and learning. Flextime allows parents to make their own schedule while still putting in the same amount of time as other employees. Telecommuting has been harder for companies to grasp onto, but gives parents the freedom to work from home and give children the attention they need.

There are feasible options that don’t involve freezing eggs and paying for storage on an annual fee on top of consultations and procedures. Companies considering adopting egg-freezing benefits or that have done so already should make sure they offer child care benefits that go further than delaying conception.

Another concern with companies giving this benefit is the question of whom this is truly benefitting. Silicon Valley companies often have long hours and a child could only interfere with productivity. But a child is going to be an interference with the workplace no matter how long a woman waits. What will truly change the game is providing benefits for parents after the birth, so they can provide equal attention to both work and family.

Even with planning, there is no perfect time for a child to enter the world. Holding off on having a child will still create hurdles in the workplace, even with maternal and paternal leave. Because the work culture expects constant overtime from its employees throughout their careers, the same problems will arise from women who have children at an older age.

There must be conceivable alternatives to allow parenthood and a career path to work symbiotically. Freezing eggs only delays work productivity issues. Corporations are making it easier for women to have a family later — they should make it easier for women to have a family now.

Julia Smith is a junior newspaper and online journalism and sociology dual major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @jcsmith711.





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