Have any of you uterus-bearers ever considered freezing your eggs to keep the tick of the biological clock at bay? Facebook and Apple have decided to cover up to $20,000 of the cost for the expensive procedure as a part of the benefits package offered to their female employees.
This decision is in response to the exceedingly low number of women in the computer sciences; according to the Computer Research Association, less than 12 per cent of degrees in this field are awarded to women each year.
According to The Telegraph, by offering to cover the costs of the procedure, Facebook and Apple hope to increase gender equality in the workplace by allowing women to focus on their careers and to not “sacrifice the chance to have a family.”
In reality, however, this procedure doesn’t change the unfair social inequity associated with making women choose between having a family and a successful career.
While the companies may mean well, they are not sending the right message to young women in the industry. The unspoken pressure that women have to choose between motherhood and being a working professional has long been assumed as a valid concern. Unfortunately, by offering this benefit, Facebook and Apple are only perpetuating the problem.
Egg-freezing only delays the same problems associated with raising children.
For example, there is concern that this option could pressure women into delaying pregnancy. If a woman’s employer generously offers to provide this resource so that she can focus on improving her career, I believe that she shouldn’t accept the offer, as upholding one’s career shouldn’t be the motivation to delay a pregnancy.
Egg-freezing, along with being a lengthy and invasive procedure, only succeeds in delaying the problems associated with balancing a high-powered career and children. Whether a woman is in her 20s or 40s, giving birth to and rearing a child is going to require that she take time off of work and modify her priorities.
While this procedure supposedly allows a woman to prioritize her work without worrying about her depleting egg quality, it doesn’t change the fact that, at some point, she will need to make serious choices about how she is going to prioritize her time.
By making this option seem like a perfect solution for female employees, Apple and Facebook are contributing to the normalization of postponed motherhood, and subsequently, the practice of egg-freezing. The fact is, risks for a mother during pregnancy increase with age. Furthermore, the procedure is far from perfect and does not guarantee conception.
If these corporations truly wish to increase gender equality in the workplace, then they should also provide options to women that make it easier to integrate being a working professional with being a mother. In combination with covering the cost of egg-freezing, they could provide free daycare in the workplace, or flexible hours to take into account the needs of raising a child.
Without making these other benefits available, Apple and Facebook do not improve gender equality, and are instead perpetuating a culture that places unfair pressures on women in the workplace.
