Dubai: A move by corporate giants Apple and Facebook to extend family planning benefits for women employees to include egg storage to support infertility treatments has sparked a huge debate among female professionals - both in and out of the IT sector.
News about Apple willing to pay its female staff up to $20,000 to freeze eggs from next year hit international headlines last week. Facebook too reportedly began covering egg-freezing for non-medical reasons in January in response to requests from employees.
Good move for the wrong reason
“It’s a good move for the wrong reasons,” said Zareen Khan, 34, founder of w2w Events & PR. “I am all for preserving eggs for medical reasons, especially after a friend was diagnosed with cancer at 31. But otherwise, I believe everyone should opt to be a young parent.”
She said there wasn’t any need for a conflict between raising a family and pursuing a career. “A lot of women have juggled between these two roles effectively and there’s no reason why they should give up one for the other.”
'Wrong signal'
Software engineer Claire Smith, 26, said such incentives may send the wrong signal. “I would construe it as work now, baby later – something that’s good for the company, bad for the family. No, there’s no way I would deliberately freeze my eggs to climb up the corporate ladder.”
A senior finance officer at a technology major, who did not want to be named, said: “We all know the high rates of infertility among professionals who put in long and unearthly hours in BPOs and some other sectors. Incentives to freeze eggs would only increase this pool. Why should work schedules be allowed to interfere with nature? The longer you put off child bearing, the more risks it can carry – but a young, just-married female worker is not inclined to think this way. To her, a $20,000 payout is a boon, not a bizarre bait.”
She added: “The cost of freezing eggs is not cheap. While it may not be allowed here, it costs around $10,000 in the west with additional costs for storage. So it’s easy for young impressionable women to accept such payouts.”
Personal choice
However, there are others who are open to the idea.
Among them is well-known sociologist Dr Rima Sibban. “Personally, I am a naturalist. But as a sociologist, I would say why not? Who am I to close the doors on someone who wants to do things differently? Such ideas, call them experimental or creative, keep surfacing in society and we should be open to them.”
Sarah, a 24-year-old computer science graduate looking for a job, said: “I don’t understand why everyone is making such a big deal of this. No one is forcing me, the choice is entirely mine.”
