Apple And Facebook Are Paying Employees To Freeze Their Eggs

[DealForTheKids]

nr.news-republic.com/Web/ArticleWeb.aspx?regionid=4&articleid=30317141&m=d

Just that really.

Are we in a Margaret Atwood novel? Is this supposed to help womens' career prospects?

What happens when you're newly married and your boss 'implies' that your career prospects might take an upturn if you take up the programme they offer? Or even that they might take a downturn if you don't?

I checked the date already, it's not April 1 :(

Sorry for the facetiousness - should have added a

I mean the non-story is 'OMG Apple and Facebook want their female employees to freeze their eggs!!!' - it's a lot more subtle and complicated than that as you have pointed out.

Oh agree, initial headline slightly off beam.

But still -worthy.

I don't agree that any part of this is a non-story. Women already overwhelmingly bear the burden of reproduction of the human race and anything that contributes to that or makes it worse is certainly a story. You might quibble over aspects of the reporting but the unavoidable fact is that this move puts further pressure on women to take all the responsibility on careers as it affects their fertility. I can't see how this wouldn't lead to pressure on women to put off having children.

Even if women do this, how would that help their careers? Instead of taking time off when they are in their 20s or 30s, they would take time off in their 40s where they will lose more money as a result and risk losing a senior job that they can't replace. Also, when the kids are older, the woman will be at retirement age with no opportunity to make a post-little-kids career advance (which is difficult enough as it is).

"well you had the option of an invasive medical procedure which would have delayed allowing us to discriminate against you, but you chose to go the "natural" route so we're going to discriminate against you now. your choice, remember!"

Oh this is what I was thinking reading this thread, Flora has said it

"Even if women do this, how would that help their careers? Instead of taking time off when they are in their 20s or 30s, they would take time off in their 40s where they will lose more money as a result and risk losing a senior job that they can't replace."

It only benefits women's careers if their careers stop at around middle management. So the very fact that this is being mooted shows up the reality in terms of "glass ceiling" (is it still called that?).

If they thought that women would be likely to carry on going up and up then why is there any benefit in delaying children.

Pah.

exactly. it's not reducing the likelihood of discrimination, it's just deferring it