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Business Daily

Egg freezing: the ultimate workplace perk?

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4816 Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2022

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Singapore has become the latest country to allow egg freezing for non-medical reasons. That is a method of preserving a woman’s fertility so she can try and have children at a later date. With an increasing number of companies offering this and other fertility benefits as a workplace perk, Ivana Davidovic asks if this always good news for women?

Carol Chen, a businesswoman based in Singapore, explains why she would have loved to have had a chance to freeze her eggs closer to home, rather than have to travel thousands of miles to the US to do the procedure there. She also hopes that other counties in Asia will soon make the process more streamlined

Just under 40% of large companies in the US - so those over 500 employees - offer fertility benefits and the numbers are rising fast. Now even Europe, with its much more generous national health services, is starting to follow suit. Co-founder of a fertility benefit company based in Berlin, Jenny Saft, explains why.

American entertainment lawyer Nyasha Foy tells her egg freezing story and the role that her employer played, while also considering specific issues faced by black women. Lecturer Lucy van de Wiel warns that employers having influence over their staff's fertility choices may not always mean good news for women.

And Californian fertility doctor Aimee Eyvazzadeh, also known as the “egg whisperer”, talks about why she throws egg freezing parties and why we might need to accept that women will increasingly give birth in their 40s and 50s.

Presented and produced by Ivana Davidovic

Image: A woman injecting hormones in preparation for egg extraction. Credit: Getty Images

Transcript

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0:00.0

Anyone that helps people who are accused of sorcery are also blamed for being sorceress.

0:05.8

Lives less ordinary from the BBC World Service.

0:09.1

Real people with extraordinary stories.

0:12.0

I started having a strength in me.

0:14.8

I have to stand up for other women.

0:16.9

Find out more at the end of this podcast.

0:20.2

Hello and welcome to Business Daily with me,

0:22.5

Ivana Davidovich. In today's program, Singapore has become the latest country to allow

0:27.5

egg freezing for non-medical reasons. That is a method of preserving a woman's fertility so she can

0:33.1

try and have children at a later date. But what does that procedure mean to women who've gone through

0:38.2

it already? I'm 37 now. I've done everything that I can do because I want to be a mother.

0:43.2

You probably can't see it over my shoulder here, pictures of my grandmother and my mom. I know

0:47.7

that I'm going to get there. I don't know how or when, but I've done what I can do to give

0:52.9

myself the best option of getting there.

0:55.0

The number of companies offering this expensive process as an employee benefit is fast increasing.

1:00.6

But is that always good news for women?

1:03.0

There's also a business culture which shows commitment to work by making time,

1:07.9

by showing that you prioritize your work.

1:10.1

And a lot of the studies that look at

1:11.8

women who have these plans offered to them, they are quite happy to have the option. But they also

1:17.2

feel that their company is telling them, you have to have your children at the right time.

1:22.5

That's all coming up in Business Daily from the BBC. I've been pretty much an entrepreneur my whole life.

...

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