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Silicon Valley just got darker: freezing female employees' eggs is anything but kind
Companies like Facebook appear to offer their staff the dream: free food, beds and break-out zones. But do they really have their best interests at heart - especially now they are funding egg freezing? Emma Barnett isn't convinced
First came the free food. Then came the beds. Now come the freezers. For your eggs. No, not those ones. Your ovaries, silly.
It is well known that Silicon Valley companies like Google, Apple and Facebook pride themselves on making their offices and company cultures as cool as their products.
I know. I’ve seen it first hand. During my tour of Google’s Mountain View campus in California, my jetlagged jaw dropped at the sight of basketball courts, vegetable patches and an endless choice of restaurants in a supposed place of work.
It felt like Disneyland for adults.
Similarly, Facebook’s free spirited office in Palo Alto (one worker did zip past me on a skateboard, for God’s sake) left a big impression. You can eat for free in these gaffes, sleep in properly designed zones and even find gratis accommodation.
Now, two of the American tech giants, Apple and Facebook, are pushing the boundaries of company culture once again: they will pay for female employees to freeze their eggs.
There won’t be facilities on site in offices, well not yet. No, these corporate behemoths are willing to put up £12,000 towards the cost of the whole experience in order to allow women to focus on their careers.
A shot from Emma's tour around the former Facebook HQ in 2011
A lot will be written and said in the next 24 hours as people get their heads around this bold move. Because bold it is. There will be much hand-wringing from our elders who will be very concerned over “women leaving it too late”.
But I’m not going to advance those positions in this article because, while I applaud innovation – and this is arguably one of the most brilliant interventions into levelling the gender playing field at work – I think this policy smacks of something far more sinister.
The corporate sponsoring of women's eggs is off
My colleague Katherine Rushton, who is based across the pond in ruthless New York, has made a good case for how this corporate sponsoring of women’s eggs could liberate women from having to give up their jobs, just as they are getting into their professional stride.
As a 29-year old newly married woman, I can relate. Believe me. Pressure from my family and expectations from friends who have already taken the baby plunge, have suddenly turned up a notch on the eve of my 30th birthday.
But, work or no work, I am simply not ready to have a baby. And crucially – my husband isn’t either. At night, away from our loved ones, we quietly but firmly remind ourselves of this fact, bolstered by dreams of greater travel and other unfulfilled ambitions which will become harder once we hopefully conceive.
Lean in ladies....
However, my colleague thinks the move could really help 25 year-olds afford this costly treatment at a time when their eggs are best, and they are just starting out in the working world.
Say what? How many 25 year-olds do you know who would want to go through this six week long painful and invasive procedure? This isn’t on most young women’s radars – fresh eggs or not. And thank goodness for that.
I’ve just got off the phone to a 40 year-old woman who froze her eggs at 36 because she was single and was starting to panic. The process was expensive, time-consuming and very uncomfortable, she tells me.
Interestingly she’s tentatively in favour of the American scheme purely because of the financial support. It cost her (and her supportive parents) an eye-popping £4,000 for one cycle, which yielded nine eggs.
But as she says: “Freezing your eggs doesn’t solve the problem. It just delays it. There’s no way I would have even considered this in my twenties. I really hope this offer wouldn’t put women off having babies who have met the right person and are settled with them in their late twenties and early thirties.”
And that’s just the point. There’s already enough pressure from every angle to conceive – without it coming indirectly from your boss. The decision should be right when it’s right for the individual.
While companies like Facebook, with their free food and ‘break-out zones’, look like they are offering their staff the dream, they are actually exerting greater control over their employees than most.
If you make an office so comfortable that you never want to leave, guess what? You rarely do – especially if you can sleep there.
These businesses may provide beautiful environments and enviable perks for their staff – but they have also massively blurred the lines between life and work for them too.
It’s the dark side of the futuristic dream. The internet was meant to liberate us all. Office presenteeism was meant to die a death as could work anywhere with our digital devices. We all now know that was one big lie. Staffers are always on – and middle-of-the-night-emails are the norm for most.
If I worked for a company that “supported me” by freezing my eggs, there would be a whole other new pressure to deal with: not to have my babies yet.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer
The offer to pay for women’s egg freezing may be a well-intended gesture by these companies – especially Facebook with the Lean-In evangelist Sheryl Sandberg at the helm – but offering it as a corporate perk doesn’t sit right. It undeniably sends out the message that delaying children is professional beneficial.
My work is my work. My life is my life. Most people, including me, have enough of a problem keeping those two separate as it is – without this being thrown into the mix.
The two people I actually know who have frozen their eggs, never want to talk about it. It’s an intensely private thing. In fact, the first rule of egg freezing club is you never talk about egg freezing club.
Can you imagine having that chat with your line manager? It doesn’t bear thinking about. I would far rather it was easier to talk about pregnancy and planning maternity leave with bosses before this open deep freeze movement took hold.
Women and men must take the decision about when to have a child based on when it’s right for them – not when it suits the company they work for.
Believe me, we professional women have already got enough on our plate without our ‘benevolent bosses’ suddenly playing God.