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Facebook and Apple Now Pay For Female Employees To Freeze Their Eggs
Dave Knott writes: While freezing eggs has become an increasingly popular practice for career-oriented women, the procedure comes at a steep price: Costs typically add up to at least $10,000 for every round, plus $500 or more annually for storage. Now two Silicon Valley giants are offering women a game-changing perk: Apple and Facebook will pay for employees to freeze their eggs. They appear to be the first major employers to offer this coverage for non-medical reasons, both offering to cover costs up to $20,000. Tech firms are hardly alone in offering generous benefits to attract and keep talent, but they appear to be leading the way with egg freezing.
Advocates say they've heard murmurs of large law, consulting, and finance firms helping to cover the costs, although no one is broadcasting this support. Companies may be concerned about the public relations implications of the benefit – in the most cynical light, egg-freezing coverage could be viewed as a ploy to entice women to sell their souls to their employer, sacrificing childbearing years for the promise of promotion. Will the perk pay off for companies? The benefit will likely encourage women to stay with their employer longer, cutting down on recruiting and hiring costs. And practically speaking, when women freeze their eggs early, firms may save on pregnancy costs in the long run. A woman could avoid paying to use a donor egg down the road, for example, or undergoing more intensive fertility treatments when she's ready to have a baby. But the emotional and cultural payoff may be more valuable, helping women be more productive human beings.
Advocates say they've heard murmurs of large law, consulting, and finance firms helping to cover the costs, although no one is broadcasting this support. Companies may be concerned about the public relations implications of the benefit – in the most cynical light, egg-freezing coverage could be viewed as a ploy to entice women to sell their souls to their employer, sacrificing childbearing years for the promise of promotion. Will the perk pay off for companies? The benefit will likely encourage women to stay with their employer longer, cutting down on recruiting and hiring costs. And practically speaking, when women freeze their eggs early, firms may save on pregnancy costs in the long run. A woman could avoid paying to use a donor egg down the road, for example, or undergoing more intensive fertility treatments when she's ready to have a baby. But the emotional and cultural payoff may be more valuable, helping women be more productive human beings.
A few of you had questions about the 'work/life balance' at this company. I take it that those have been settled?
Someone let the IT guy into the HR office again.
"helping women be more productive human beings." Because working at Apple is more productive than raising a family?
I'd add that, as a man, I'd like to see paternity time increased. When my first child was born, I was lucky enough to be able to take a week off of work to help. My wife had just given birth and while I can't ever completely know how hard that is, I knew enough to know that she would be exhausted so I took care of our new baby as much as I could - giving her time to rest up. Had I been able to take longer than a week, I would have.
When our second child was born, I took a couple of days off, but wasn't able to take the week-long stretch that I took the first time.
Many new fathers are looked down upon if they try to take time off to look after the new baby. There was one baseball player who was recently castigated by a sports announcer for daring to miss the first game of the season because his wife gave birth. He decided that helping his wife and new baby were more important than a baseball game. The sports announcer literally thought that the ball player's first priority should be to the game and not his family.
Better paternity leave will also help women in the workplace because then the burden on taking care of the baby post-birth can be split evenly instead of just being tossed on the woman. (And then having people say "If we hire women they might leave to take care of their babies.")
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.