Egg freezing: an employer’s affair?

Egg freezing, or oocyte cryopreservation, is a process that allows women to preserve their fertility. Though not covered by the NHS, the treatment is growing in popularity – and a recent BBC report on the topic has highlighted the increasing willingness of employers to get involved.

There is no doubt that it is an expensive process. The Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority state that “the average cost of having your eggs collected and frozen is £3,350, with medication being an added £500-£1,500”. It also costs an extra £125-£350 per year to store the eggs. Thawing and transferring them to the womb costs a further £2,500, bringing the total to an average of £7,000 to £8,000.

It is, therefore, understandable that some employers are now including egg freezing in what they describe as an “ever-expanding portfolio of fertility benefits”.

This began with Facebook and Apple offering egg freezing as part of their benefits package in 2014. In 2022, against a backdrop of there being more jobs than unemployed people for the first time, offering fertility benefits makes sense for employers who are struggling to recruit new workers and retain the ones they have.

This has culminated in nearly 40% of large companies in the US offering them. In Europe – which has more comprehensive state-funded healthcare – some firms are also following suit, with one notable example being social media marketing firm Hootsuite. Natwest has also introduced employee discounts for fertility treatments, which range from 5% to 20%.

Law firms Freshfields and Cooley also offer compensation for a range of fertility treatments, with the latter offering coverage of up to £45,000.

However, Dr Lucy Van De Wiel, a lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London, urged caution regarding the involvement of an employer in employees’ fertility treatment, describing the offering of these benefits as “PR technology” that is effective in “attracting and retaining female staff, and that is how it is sold by the insurance companies to employers”.

What’s more, Dr Van De Wiel says some studies show employees feel their employer may be telling them that they have to “time” having children. She also raises concerns regarding the information and education women receive on fertility treatment coming from companies and insurers that stand to gain financially from people undergoing the treatment.

New York-based lawyer Nyasha Foy also raised the conflict of interest with regards to a firm benefiting from their employees taking up the option of treatment:

“I absolutely do see this idea that if I give you $10,000 for the egg freezing, the return on the investment of you working one or two more years in this company, is a win. There’s a sense of that kind of energy and you feel a little funny about it, right?”

However, Foy was keen to emphasise that there are also benefits of undergoing the treatment, notably the autonomy and choice over when to have children:

“There is this sense in the back of your head that you need to hurry up and just have a kid. I’m okay with the commodification of it, especially in America, as we’re having to revisit Roe v Wade. To be able to say as a woman, I choose to just wait a little bit longer. That choice is not only body autonomy, that is life autonomy.”