The workforces of Facebook and Apple are 69 percent and 70 percent male, and the companies have been getting a lot of flack for those figures. In their latest bid to attract and retain more women, the tech giants have come up with a technical fix: offering female employees a $20,000 benefit toward elective egg freezing.
According to a statement from Apple about the program, “We want to empower women at Apple to do the best work of their lives as they care for loved ones and raise their families.”<
Surely what they meant to say was, “We want women at Apple to spend more of their lives working for us without a family to distract them.”
The Facebook version might be, “We don’t want women leaning out to start families, so we’re paying them not to!”
The move by Apple and Facebook is a boon for the companies marketing social egg freezing in Silicon Valley, New York City and elsewhere. But despite what EggBanxx wants wealthy Manhattanites to believe, freezing your eggs is not a magic wand that will allow you to raise a family at your own pace, away from the pressures of your workplace and biological clock.
Unfortunately, when you work for a company that wants you to spend your entire life at the office, in a society that under-prioritizes all occupations traditionally undertaken by women, there will never be an ideal time to start a family.
Read full original article: Dear Facebook: Please Don’t Tell Women to Lean In to Egg Freezing
