Apple Inc, Facebook to help female employees freeze their eggs

Apple Inc and Facebook Inc would help pay female employees to freeze their eggs, laying out more perks and benefits in a race to acquire top-flight talent, Reuters reported.

From January, Apple would pay both full- and part-time employees up to $20,000 towards procedure and storage costs for female employees who opt to freeze their eggs.

"We continue to expand our benefits for women, with a new extended maternity leave policy, along with cryopreservation and egg storage as part of our extensive support for infertility treatments," Apple said in a statement. "We want to empower women at Apple to do the best work of their lives as they care for loved ones and raise their families."

NBC News reported yesterday that Facebook recently started covering egg-freezing for non-medical reasons, which made the social network the first major employer in the technology sector to do so.

According to a Facebook spokeswoman, the company rolled out the benefit in January in response to requests from employees, among other reasons.

Egg freezing is a costly but increasingly popular option for women who want to delay child bearing. Women who have to undergo medical treatments that interfere with fertility such as with cancer also benefit from the procedure, which typically costs up to $10,000, with an additional $500 for storage each year.

Facebook started offering female staff up to $20,000 for ocyte-cryopreservation, as the procedure is called The Telegraph reported. The procedure typically costs between $10,000 and $15,000, plus an additional $1,000-a-year to keep the harvested eggs on ice.

The social network is also helping men who want to become parents. All staff would be entitled to help with adopting, and a ''host of other fertility services'', according to the company.

The move would help both companies attract more female staff and retain them for longer by easing pressure on them to have children before a particular age.

Women's fertility declines after the age of 35, and falls even more rapidly after 40 – around the age when many professional women are hitting their stride.

Instead of taking up senior positions, many women having children choose to quit the workforce, leading to a loss of experienced talent.

The offer to help female executives to freeze their eggs would also serve to set Apple and Facebook apart from much of the rest of the technology sector, which is dominated by male executives.

Last week, Microsoft's chief executive, Satya Nadella, drew the ire of both men and women globally when he said that female staff should rely on 'karma' rather than asking for a pay rise.