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Facebook, Apple to cover costs of freezing female employees’ eggs

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Silicon Valley is a notorious “boys club” and historically hostile to female employees’ advancement, but two of the biggest tech companies are looking to keep more women around with a pledge to pay to freeze their eggs.

Facebook and Apple told NBC News they’re going to cover non-medical egg freezing and the annual storage fees, a first among major U.S. employers and something advocates hope will spur more to follow their lead.

While most medical plans in the U.S., where there is no universal health care, cover medically necessary egg preservation that a young woman who contracts, for example, ovarian cancer, may pursue. But they do not cover the optional medical treatment of having one’s eggs removed when they’re still viable — in late twenties and early thirties — and then preserved through freezing for when that woman feels ready to have a family. Scientifically, it’s called “oocyte cryopreservation” and it’s an option a growing number of Canadian women are exploring as well.

But it’s not cheap: Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto charges $4,800 for the initial removal of the eggs, and $750 each year thereafter for storage.

In America, the initial procedure can cost up to $10,000 and annual storage fees cost $500 a year, according to NBC. Now, Facebook is covering that option for its female staff members and Apple is set to follow suit in January. The U.S. network reports:

Covering egg freezing can be viewed as a type of “payback” for women’s commitment, said Philip Chenette, a fertility specialist in San Francisco.
The companies offer egg-freezing coverage under slightly different terms: Apple covers costs under its fertility benefit, and Facebook under its surrogacy benefit, both up to $20,000. Women at Facebook began taking advantage of the coverage this year.

The move follows the “Lean In” campaign from Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, whose bestseller of the same name encourages 21st century women to embrace both career and family. Offering female employees a cost-saving option to postpone their families may help even the playing field with men, who don’t suffer the same biological clock ticking down in their thirties.

Sheryl Sandberg Ban Bossy

This July 2, 2013 file photo shows Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg speaking during Global Women Leadership Summit in Tokyo. (Shizuo Kambayashi/ Associated Press)

And yet, the pledge also smacks of a half-measure: put off having kids because you can’t possibly balance both this career and a family. Instead, why aren’t these companies offering better day care or maternity leave benefits, or combining those offerings with footing the bill for freezing those eggs? Because without support in place to help women balance family and career, how are they ever supposed to have time to defrost their ova?

No Canadian employers are yet on board, but the move raises some interesting questions about women in the workplace and how to best way to support both their careers and their family life. Medically necessary fertility treatments — those that arise because of another illness like cancer — are covered by some employer health plans.


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