Frozen Eggs and Women in High Tech
I have a few things to say, and the credentials to say them, about egg headed egg freezing policies for women in high tech at Apple and Facebook. First, my credentials:
- I worked for two of the world’s largest high tech firms
- While undergoing fertility treatment, my husband and I were advised to freeze embryos, many of them. After having a child, without using the frozen embryos, we had to make a heart wrenching decision about what to do with them.Twenty five years later, it is still unsettling.
- I’ve conducted research on career impediments for women in high tech
- I’m a strategic advisor to a high tech firm that is increasing the number of women at all levels of the organizaiton. Eggs, frozen or otherwise, play no role in their successful approach to gender diversity. We focus, instead, on the real issues of unconscious gender bias and culture change.
Unfreezing Mindsets
Company support for fertility treatments as a medical intervention, is a matter of health care policy and benefits. Not so for egg-freezing that doesn’t respond to a medical problem. When women choose to delay child birth because career pressures are too great, or the motherhood penalty is too severe, the problem does not lie with the timing of having children. The problem is a culture that makes it extremely difficult to do so during prime child-bearing years. THIS is the problem that needs fixing and one for which freezing eggs is not a solution.
I don’t know the rationale for Apple’s or Facebook’s egg freezing decision, but I’m wary. According to a comprehensive study on women in STEM conducted in 2008, an inordinately high number of thirty to forty year old women leave their jobs, their companies and their careers. But they don’t do so to stay home with children. They move on to careers that are more woman and family friendly. Are Apple, Facebook and other tech companies that are likely to follow suit, attempting to narrow the exit gates for women in this age group?
Dear High-tech Execs:
There’s a better solution. It will cost you less money while building your talent pool. Women in their 30s and 40s will stay. They’ll contribute over the course of a long and successful career. To take advantage of this solution, you have to unfreeze your current thinking, you mental model about people’s peak performance years. Then, you’ll decide it’s wise and profitable to invest in talented people over a different career life span.
Consider that women may reach the height of their careers later than men do. Follow me and connect the dots to understand why.
Dot 1: Boys and girls lose self-confidence from ages 9 – 22 (1)
Dot 2: Women experience the largest increase in self-confidence between ages 40 – 70, whereas men make their biggest gains between 40 – 50 (1)
Dot 3: Women in their late 40s and early 50s are typically emptying their nests. They’re ready for a long hard refreshing swim in the deep end of your talent pool – where people with advanced skills and mature attitudes belong.
To take advantage of this difference, consider ending the Mommy penalty. Consider keeping us engaged with fulfilling work and careers that won’t have us running for the exit doors when our children are young. Consider that we can ramp up and step up year after year as our children get older. Consider that when they leave home, we’re chomping at the bit for new and exciting challenges, perhaps as men of our same age are wishing to slow down and seeing a vision of their retirement years. Consider men and women as part of a relay team. Med are ready to pass the baton and women are ready to run with it. In the meantime, save the corporate freezer for other matters.
1. Global Self-Esteem Across the Life Span in Psychology and Aging, 2002 Volume 17, No. 3, (423 – 434).