Would you sell your fertility to your employer?

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Finally, huge corporate giants like Apple and Facebook have ushered in a level playing field. After free laundry, unlimited vacations, baby care facilities, the two corporates have come up with an unprecedented perk of freezing the eggs of their women employees. This move should enable them to continue working undeterred by the cruel, ever-ticking biological clock. Both companies have generously offered to pay a whopping $20000 to cover the cost of freezing the eggs and storing them. It’s a day of victory for American women and Indra Nooyi stands vindicated. The dream of motherhood and an excellent career - women can finally have it all!

Or can they?

The move is being touted as an attempt to bring in parity between the workforce which consists of men and women. Women tend to take breaks to have and nurture children setting them back in their career. So, the companies have now decided to free them of this crushing worry. Women employees can now happily concentrate on their careers while their employers will take care of the cost of preserving their fertility.

It’s a great move for the organizations who get the best years of a woman’s life working for them. But are they not encouraging women to delay having children by dangling a sense of false complacency about motherhood in front of them? Are they trying to say that work comes first and parental instincts can wait? Is this a call to compromise on the best phase of a couple’s life nurturing for their child, which translates to better quality of personal life? It’s like saying that since women’s absence while having babies is an inconvenience at work, let’s just take babies out of the equation. Perks to entice talent is great and desirable. But managing the fertility of your employees is taking it a bit too far! To me, it just exposes the sinister desire of companies to win employees’ commitment and cut down on hiring and training costs by giving out a false sense of welfare.

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Let’s look at it from a woman’s perspective. Women have already been meted out a raw deal by Nature and society. They have enough on her plate juggling home and career. The fact that child birth sets them back in their career leads them to postpone it, anyways. But the companies are now offering the delay as an incentive which forces women to hedge on a future possibility which has a very meager chance of success. At least the ticking of the biological clock gets them to consider babies before it is too late. But this perk might ensure that it is too late. Women in their 20‘s, which is the best time to have a child, are hardly thinking about motherhood and fertility issues.

Whether a woman wants to have a baby and when and how she wants to have it are deeply personal issues. Leave alone the company they work for, I don’t think anyone else, except the couple involved, should have the right to decide this critical issue. The employer has no right to tell a woman what she should or should not do about her fertility issues.

Also, are women better off if they postpone motherhood and don’t take breaks? Are they as successful and well paid as men? You wish! There is research to back up the fact that no matter what, women are paid less than men. Even at the cost of postponing motherhood. So who’s losing again? Women! If you want to treat women equally, a good start is to pay her what she deserves. Don’t rob her of it just because of her gender.

Even if a woman chooses to delay pregnancy, how can one be sure that a she will be in a better position to take a break in her career to have kids at 35 than at 25? By that age, wouldn’t she have given up everything she had, including the joys of motherhood, for her career? She is more likely to be in line for promotions she worked hard for all her life. Would she want to give it all up and use the damn frozen eggs because her employers planned it that way for her?

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Okay, given that freezing eggs in lieu of a worry-free, flourishing career is a fair deal. But medically, the process is not a party women would love to go to! It’s a 6-week long, invasive, hormones-induced process which makes the ovaries produce multiple eggs, sometimes upto 15, in one cycle. A woman’s body is injected with high doses of hormones to induce the ovary to produce so many eggs in a single cycle. So it’s like dialing up the pressure of hormones multiple times to achieve the results. The eggs are then removed through an invasive procedure and frozen for future use.

Someone i am close to went through the process for IVF, recently. She told me that the process is so long and painful that she wouldn’t wish it for anyone else go through it. Her advice - the best thing for women to do is conceive naturally by planning babies at a younger age.

After going through the arduous process, can a woman stop worrying and fearlessly go back to work? Scientists unanimously agree that the answer is - no. Frozen egg is not equal to a baby in the future. With the advancing years, the success rate also plummets considerably, sometimes dropping to just 35% in the 40's. Hence, the logic that the facility of freezing eggs can preserve the fertility of women to be used anytime in the future is a myth. Freezing doesn’t guarantee children. What do the employers intend to do if 5 years down the line women are unable to conceive through those eggs? Any answers?

Also, are we bidding adieu to the natural process of conception? Is sex, which is also important for deeper bonding between couples, being sacrificed at the alter of professional success? Freezing is supposed to be the last resort and the norm of having babies. Are our conversation in the future going to be - “Honey, it’s time to have a baby! Let’s defrost!” If nature meant babies to be conceived in a particular way, who are we to question and worse still, defy it?

What about men? Why are women being discriminated against here? Are men not going through fertility issues due to long working hours, stress, lack of physical activity and reduced intimacy? Or is it conveniently been ignored in the scheme of things? What if women have frozen their fertility but men lost it in the game? I guess the male fertility preservation can be the perk offered for next year!

If companies care for their employees, both men and women, they should encourage them to have well-rounded lives which don’t expect them to cut back on family life. If corporates indeed want a level playing field for men and women, enable the woman to balance the responsibility Nature entrusted her with. Don’t manage her fertility for her. Accept her the way she is! Encourage her to have children at a biologically safe age without the fear of losing out in her career. Don’t tweak her biology to ensure steady workforce. If you really want to be a caring employer, assure her that you will treat her equal to men when she comes back having fulfilled her personal duties. Give her the power to decide when she wants to enjoy motherhood and not worry about being penalized for it. Give her the right to love her child freely and indulge in her maternal love, not deprive her of motherhood.

iPhone, iPad, iPod and all that

The world is taken by storm every time Apple launches its products, not to forget the buzz that precedes the event. Same is the case with iPhone 6, iPhone 6plus and the Apple watch. From the unique features of the gadgets to kidney-selling jokes on twitter to be able to afford it are a part of discussions on social media. i always wondered what is so big deal about a piece of gadget or a spanking new car! Wondered what made people so crazy about it. But having one such fanatic as my husband, it has made me realise that boys and their toys work perhaps just like girls and our make-up!

i am no techno enthusiast. So i cant give a feature by feature account of the new devices launched by Apple. But yeah, all the drooling over around me makes me sit up and think about my experiences with Apple products that i have used over the years since 2008.

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i was introduced to Apple at a point in my life when i did not even know the importance of the brand. i only knew Microsoft. But thanks to my Apple-freak husband, my first laptop was a 15 inch MacBook Pro. It has a nice, big screen and keyboard you can spread both your hands on! It took me a while to figure out all the wonderful features of the device. Being able to add the range of Microsoft features like word etc made it easier to get used to the Mac versions of the same.

And soon, i felt like a spastic if i had to use any Microsoft computer. Like people who have used Apple say - you cant use anything else once you are used to Apple! i still use my Macbook even though Apple has put it out of any kind of service or warranty about 2 years ago. You see, Apple moves on to newer versions each year and hence don’t have the time to look at aging machines. The CD drive has a problem and there are display issues, but I know there’s a lot of life left in my Mac yet!! And i am not replacing my constant buddy of 6 years any time soon!

My husband always wanted a Mac for himself. But his company IT policy wouldn’t let him use one for official purposes. But piddling company policies don’t stop a real enthusiast! He bought a 15 inch slim Mac and now i am typing on his 13 inch Mac. (extra gadgets are given away to people who will value them!)

And oh! An iPod touch was his first gift to me even before i knew this guy who i was about to marry was a gadget freak! i started using it only after marriage. A worthy gift since i love listening to music. Though adding songs is a painful and time consuming process. My current iPod is a tiny, old 16GB iPod nano which i have stuck to despite newer versions being bought and given away to people. Well, i don’t want to change iPods and keep shifting songs. Secondly, i am fine with gadgets as long as they serve my purpose. i am not crazy about advanced technology that comes with newer versions.

Coming to iPads, i thought it was really intelligent to change an iPod touch version to an iPad! Larger than the iPod and smaller than the laptop, it seemed the perfect size. By this time, i was kinda getting to understand what is the big deal about new gadgets!

The year iPad 1 was launched was also the year my husband bought one. (It looks so clunky compared to later versions now). Hubby dear used it for a year and passed it on to me when his company gave him iPad 2. i must just read some books on it not having figured out all other things it could do. And as luck would have it, he quit his job 3 yrs ago, returned iPad 2 to the company and happily bought iPad 3, which he uses even now!

Never crazy about an iPad, i’d occasionally play games on his iPad. A mini iPad is the first gadget i asked for in January this year. i thought the size was perfect for browsing and reading books/blogs. With compatible keyboards with iPad, it becomes the smallest computer like device possible. Even though it’s not the best for typing stuff since the screen and the keyboard are small, i can always carry it to meetings and cafes to type out blog drafts. It is also great to watch videos, access maps and check social media on the go.

Coming to iPhones, i reluctantly shifted to an iPhone 5 from my Blackberry bold which i was happy with. We had iPhone 5 lying around, thanks to my better half who is happy to just buy the newer versions but not keen to use them himself. When there was word out iPhone 5s being out, i thought that our iPhone would become an old version without even anyone of us using it. i was apprehensive about the touch keypad since i message a lot. But it took me no time to get used to it.

Just as i had put this one to use, hubby dear promptly went and bought iPhone 5S which was launched some time later! i am absolutely against upgrading to new gadgets every 6 months or throwing away money on buying them when we don’t need them. But do husbands care? No. (And no, even though the 5S is lying around, it’s not being given away to anyone)

So having been through an entire range of Apple products, what do i think? Apple products are great and Apple ensures that we get newer and better versions every year. The displays are great, keyboards comfortable and the basic features only get better in the future versions. Did Apple change my life? Maybe. i guess, if i did not have it, i would have just gotten used to what i had!

But i have a problem with the rate at which they release their new offerings. Yes, there was a huge difference between the first Mac and Air version. But there is only so much that you can do with each upgraded version. To make the laptop slimmer, the CD drive is missing. The projector cable slot is gone - which is important for me as a trainer when i conduct sessions.

i don’t see much difference between my iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S which my sister uses. Screens can get bigger and the body slimmer, but is my current phone - now it is 2 versions old - that old? Will i, as a customer, throw away a perfectly fine phone and spend a fortune on the latest version? i don’t think so. And i guess that’s why i don’t understand Apple’s strategy of introducing new products so fast.

And i definitely think that Apple products, especially iPhones, cost a bomb. These shiny new gadgets have a lot of aspirational value. But wouldn’t that close-to-a-lakh be better spent elsewhere in your life and otherwise? Here i’ll definitely say - it’s just a phone! It takes crap loads of effort to make that much money. And such are the times that we are expected to just blow it on a phone!

To all of you slobbering over iPhone 6 and feeling disheartened about not being able to afford one, take heart! It’s no big deal! Your phone is good enough for now! Do you want to regret spending a fortune this year when Apple comes up with an even more desirable iPhone 7 next year? Because you know it will!