One of my mid-March posts was a radical relook at the gender gap.* Why I wondered were still so few women in top positions of American leadership and management. To answer the question, I surfaced a topic that’s typically taboo. The differences, the determinative differences, between women and men – both physically and psychologically.
In the post and in a chapter for a forthcoming volume on women and leadership, I referenced the impact on women of, for example, menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, breast-feeding, and menopause. I included on this list fertility issues, which few men attempt to address but many women, about ten percent of women, do.
Today’s post is an update on women and fertility – specifically on what some women do to slow the biological clock by freezing their eggs. Their hope is to make it easier for them to have a baby later in life, typically in their mid-to-late thirties and early to mid-forties.**
Of course, many women don’t know that freezing their eggs for the purpose of getting pregnant at an older age is even possible. Further, many women who do know and would like the opportunity do not have the resources – financial, personal, professional – to undertake fertility treatments. Finally, most women who do know about freezing their eggs and who do have the resources either never consider or decide against fertility treatments.
But in recent years the number of women who freeze their eggs has shot up and it’s growing every year. “In 2015 there were about 7,600 egg freezing cycles recorded nationwide, and by 2022 the number hit 29,803, a nearly 300 percent increase.” Moreover, in some white-collar industries some companies cover the costs of fertility treatments – not out of the kindness of their hearts but because they are competing for talent.
But people should understand that fertility treatments are one of the reasons why women pay a much greater professional price than do men for the physical and psychological differences between them. It is women not men who go through the egg freezing cycle, which starts when they inject themselves once or sometimes twice a day with hormones. The cycle takes two weeks; it ends when a physician extracts however many healthy eggs with a needle. Further, to increase their chances of someday having a viable pregnancy, some women go through the cycle more than once.
On the surface this might seem no more than fourteen days of inconvenience. Fourteen days during which women might well be unable to conduct business as usual. But the effects of such treatments are experienced not once in a woman’s lifetime but twice.
First, in the present, given fertility treatments sometimes have unpleasant or even debilitating physical side effects such as headaches and cramping. Further are psychological effects – issues involving fertility can be distracting as well as draining. In an article that appeared last year in Time, one woman described her experience this way: “After countless negative pregnancy tests, a second infertility diagnosis, and a miscarriage that nearly broke me, my world quickly started to revolve around getting pregnant. I used every fertility app under the sun; cut alcohol; followed the ‘fertility’ diet religiously; I even hired a spiritual healer.”
Second, are the future effects of fertility treatments. While their purpose is to maintain the option of having a baby, the point is for this to happen usually five, ten, or even fifteen years down the line. This means that the ultimate outcome of a successful fertility treatment is likely to coincide with when women are hitting their professional stride. When they are most likely already to be in or to attain high ranking positions of management and leadership.
Let’s be clear. Being pregnant, giving birth, breast feeding (which over 80% of American women do), and for the indefinite future caring for a child is the ultimate personal commitment. Which inevitably means it is the ultimate professional distraction. If, therefore, a woman gives birth in, say, her late thirties or forties, to assume this will have no impact whatsoever on her ability or ambition is to assume something without evidence that is, moreover, counterintuitive.
Women who are determined someday to lead or manage should make no mistake. Until the workplace is more forgiving, and exercising leadership is less demanding, fertility treatments might someday in some way incur a professional price. I am not insisting that they will. I am suggesting that there is a good chance they might.
———————————————————————–
*A Radical Relook at the Gender Gap – Barbara Kellerman
** Some of the information as well as the quote in this post are from this New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/29/business/egg-freezing-fertility-benefits.html