Is egg freezing a smart move for companies and employees?

The announcement that Apple and Facebook will start offering female employees a $20,000 benefit to freeze their eggs and delay childbirth has been met with largely negative reactions directed towards the health risks of the procedure, which is invasive, takes weeks to complete, and yields varying success rates. Questions have also been raised over the motives of these companies. Some proponents point to the freedom that egg freezing affords women to bear children in their late 30s and 40s; other supporters argue that simply having the option – whether or not they make use of it – is an asset for women.

But does it really serve everyone’s best interest to have egg freezing as an available option? Marcy Darnovsky, a reporter for the Center for Genetics and Society, argues that by encouraging female employees to postpone motherhood in order to work more, the companies do a disservice to all working women.

“Defenders of the egg-freezing offer have welcomed it as an ‘option’ for women lucky enough to work for Facebook or Apple—itself a highly limited career path, as recently compiled statistics about the lack of diversity in high-tech companies can attest. Like its lexical sister ‘choice,’ ‘option’ often functions as a trump card in potentially fraught debates like this one. I’m not arguing that ‘choices’ or ‘options’ are unimportant, but we need to to situate them in broader social contexts, too, including those of class, race, and gender.”

Presenting women the option to freeze their eggs sends the message that productivity in the workplace and childbearing do not go hand in hand. What, then, of women who are not financially or physically capable of undergoing the procedure, or who simply don’t want to? As Darnovsky points out, the money being spent on egg freezing could just as easily go towards implementing more supportive, family-friendly policies, such as pre-school for toddlers, better health care, and paid leave for parents. In the long term, such policies are likely to be of greater service to working parents.

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