Nyasha Foy is at an alumni networking event in New York in 2016 when an elderly female student asked if she was planning to freeze her eggs. “I was surprised, but then I felt comfortable,” explains Foy. “She’s asking me what should be a standard female question.” Forward a few years to 2019, when Foy finds himself visiting that friend’s apartment every night for two weeks, carrying a cool pack of pills. Foy was afraid of needles, so the woman helped inject hormones.
These stimulated her ovaries to produce multiple eggs, which were then surgically removed and frozen in a lab. The process is physically demanding and can cause a range of PMS-like symptoms. Patients may need a week of rest and recovery afterward. Normally, this would cost the 34-year-old New Yorker a minimum of $9,000, but she didn’t have to pay a dime. Instead, it is covered by her company, Complex Networks.
Foy is one of thousands of employees for whom the company has paid the bill for egg retrieval, freezing and storage. Facebook first started offering this option to employees in 2014, after COO Sheryl Sandberg said she heard about a female employee with cancer who couldn’t afford to freeze her eggs — so the company stepped in. Soon, other Silicon Valley tech companies like Google and Apple followed suit.
As with medical egg freezing, for example, if a woman’s fertility is threatened by a disease such as endometriosis or sickle cell anemia, employer-supported programs Support includes “selective egg freezing” and often also includes IVF, adoption, donor and surrogacy services, fertility assessment, and education. This process is handled by private third-party fertility and family care providers such as Good people and Carrot, has exploded during the pandemic.
Gina Bartasi, founder and CEO of Kindbody, believes the reason behind this increase is threefold. “Our patients have flexibility in their work and personal schedules to think about egg freezing, and with Covid, meeting a potential mate is less likely,” she explains. happens a lot more. “That and the law of big numbers — the more people do it, the more people talk about it and feel comfortable with it.” In 2021, Kindbody clinics the number tripled and its revenue quadrupled. Ride-hailing app Lyft is among the companies that recently joined as a customer and is now offering the service to its employees.
Bartasi, who has worked in the fertility industry for more than a decade, recalls when most companies were skeptical. By offering such perks, they are believed to be motivating their workers to delay parenthood, causing them to work longer. Everything feels very different now. “In the US, it’s table betting,” she said. “Professional young women ask about this during the interview process, and employees will leave without reproductive benefits when they want to.” Indeed, 68 percent of employees, according to a survey, will switch jobs for a better fertility policy. “Demand is coming from workers, rather than from employers,” says Bartasi.
