WHEN I read the news that Apple and Facebook are now paying up to $20,000 for female employees to freeze their eggs, I had the distinct impression I was meant to react by dancing gleefully with my girls, high-fiving each other and generally whooping it up, as in a yoghurt or soap commercial.
Work-life balance? No longer a problem! Fertility? Oh-ho-ho, NAILED IT!
Except, no. No, to this news. No, to companies trying to get women to bargain away their biological clock in exchange for keeping their noses to the grindstone, never leaving the office because “Who cares? Time is on my side!”
This latest offering from Apple and Facebook is a devil’s deal in the guise of a gender equity perk. What a truly terrible idea this is, and what a weird, cynical message it sends to women.
First off, a few disclaimers: I am very pro-single woman. I was one until very recently.
I don’t like articles that try to make women feel afraid they’ll never have kids, and I don’t like these same women being told, either implicitly or explicitly, that they are somehow Less Than because they don’t have a husband or family.
I am an advocate of women finding and following their own path.
If women think they’d like to have kids but haven’t yet met the right person, I am absolutely in favour of them taking steps to potentially protect their fertility while gaining some much-needed calm at the same time.
But I’m also interested in scientific fact, and not preying on women’s insecurities while selling them the idea that egg-freezing is somehow the great feminist panacea.
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