Companies provide benefits to their employees for several reasons — first and foremost to recruit new workers and retain the ones they have. And it works. Employees who value a particular benefit or combination of benefits — such as help with tuition to get more training or an extra week's vacation — will be more likely to take jobs and continue to work for that employer.
But companies also offer benefits as tax write-offs or as a way to increase the productivity of their employees by enabling them to focus on their jobs. Thus, some benefits make it easier for employees to put in long hours (on-site services such as dry cleaning, health care, meal delivery, etc.).
The latest benefit? "Egg freezing," so young women can postpone motherhood and concentrate on building their careers.
Why are leading high-tech employers, such as Apple and Facebook, making such generous offers for a process that can cost tens of thousands of dollars? We believe this trend reflects the fact that good jobs, high wages and benefits are based on a (male) career mystique. Workers are expected to move up organizational ladders by devoting their time and effort to the firm at the expense of anything else in their lives.
But this model was based on the feminine mystique, that women would find contentment by focusing exclusively on their homes, children and husbands' career success.
The feminine mystique has eroded, but family-care obligations remain problematic. With the rise in dual-career couples, fewer families have help at home, meaning women (especially) juggle work and home life. The corporate challenge seems to be: How can we make women more like men? How can women fit into the male template of work and career paths?
The latest answer is egg freezing. We are not surprised that some women employees would find this benefit attractive, particularly those who strive to have a successful career where success is determined by continuous work histories and putting in long hours. Such a career mystique has real costs for those who deviate from it or even appear as if they might. Thus women (and especially mothers) experience discrimination in hiring, advancement and wages.
Many women have dealt with this "problem" as a private trouble, leaning in to their careers by postponing or not taking on motherhood, or by outsourcing family care to others. Postponing motherhood by freezing one's eggs must seem like a welcome alternative, a continuation of the trend toward delaying childbirth. Freezing eggs appears to be an easy solution to women's (and increasingly men's) concerns about how to incorporate families — an experience that is life-defining for many — into their career plans.
