Top tech firms will pay for egg-freezing

Silicon Valley titans Apple and Facebook announced this week that they would be willing to cover the costs of women employees who may seek to freeze their eggs, an initiative presumably aimed at improving the participation of women, during their childbearing years, in a male-dominated industry.

While Facebook has since early 2014 offered to pay for the freezing process, typically priced at $10,000 in the first instance followed by $500 per year for storage, Apple said in a statement, “We continue to expand our benefits for women, with a new extended maternity leave policy, along with cryopreservation and egg storage as part of our extensive support for infertility treatment.”

The company added, “We want to empower women at Apple to do the best work of their lives as they care for loved ones and raise their families.”

While there are slight differences in the type of coverage offered by the two firms, for example Apple covering the costs under its fertility benefit, while Facebook pays for it under surrogacy benefits, both firms indicated their willingness to front up to $20,000 per woman employee for such treatments.

Apple’s policy is expected to kick in from January 2015 onwards, and it will be an additional layer of support over the company’s 18-week paid maternity leave. Similarly Facebook has other benefits in place including a $4,000 cash bonus to new parents.

Providing a possible explanation for why corporations may be offering such benefits at this time Alan Copperman, Director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology at Mount Sinai hospital said, that there had been an “explosion,” in the number of women freezing their eggs for potential insemination later, with the number of women opting for the “tried and true option” of egg-freezing rising fourfold in the last four years.

However some, including Glenn Cohen of Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Centre for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, wondered whether women employees would welcome this option, “Or would they take this as a signal that the firm thinks that working there as an associate and pregnancy are incompatible?”