Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week it was widely reported that an Australian company, Virtus Health, has joined Silicon Valley giants Facebook and Apple in offering women employees the option of subsidised egg freezing in order to facilitate delayed motherhood. For this particular company, which specialises in IVF, it is undoubtedly a cost-effective employee benefit option and it has no doubt garnered a degree of publicity as an Australian first.

But I wanted to rise tonight to sound a note of caution about the idea of social freezing becoming a workplace trend. There are all manner of implications for young women in the workforce when employers provide this costly service as a form of workplace entitlement. As we all know, employee entitlements tend to reflect workplace ethos and culture. It would be naive to think that this option is offered up as a benign choice and employees would not feel a certain pressure to comply with the notion of deferring children.

At the outset, I want to stress that a woman's reproductive health decisions are uniquely her own. But for the majority of women, raising children will be part of their life's story, and that is a good thing. It is fundamental to our society and it is crucial for our economic future, especially as the population ages.

But I fear that the whole concept of boss-sponsored delayed motherhood implies a very definite preferment for women who prioritise their job above their family. It also implies that freezing your eggs is a perfectly workable and viable alternative that will provide young women with the flexible option of taking up motherhood at a time that better suits them.

The truth is, as Dr Gino Pecoraro, obstetrician and obstetrics and gynaecology spokesperson for the Australian Medical Association says:

On the whole we're very good at freezing eggs, but we're not so great at thawing them.

In fact, the chance of a live birth, even from eggs harvested from a woman 38 or younger, is between two to 12 per cent per egg, and IVF is not the easy solution that some of the headlines seem to suggest.

The chance of a live birth per started IVF treatment cycle in the 30-34 age group is roughly 25 per cent, and only 6.6 per cent for women aged 40-44. For women aged over 45, the success rate is just 1.2 per cent. We need to be honest about these figures and what they mean, because many young women only see the headline that Apple is paying $20,000 to freeze employees eggs, and assume that it just works: that assisted reproductive technology will allow them to beat their body clock.

The reality is, for many women it will not. There is a finite window on when conceiving and carrying a pregnancy can be successful for a woman. And the cruel reality is it is a much smaller time frame than that for a man who wants to be a father.

This is a complex issue—worthy of much more time than I have in this debate–but I wish to touch on some workplace implications. It is generally agreed that more needs to be done to increase female work participation but the answer to increasing it is not freezing eggs and delaying motherhood, because there is no perfect time to have children. There will always be financial obligations and there will always be financial wish lists without the added pressure of workplace expectations;

But I believe that delaying motherhood can potentially mean that future financial burdens are even greater. Starting a family later also means returning to the workforce at an older age, when it is potentially harder to secure employment. This could well lead to financial difficulties supporting the child or children.

As a society we ought to be looking at ways to recognise and accommodate the demands of motherhood, rather than avoiding them. Asking women to delay childbirth and to even offer them a financial incentive to freeze their eggs is not the answer to increased female participation in the workforce. Let's look at flexible work hours, telecommuting, home office arrangements, better maternity leave provisions and flexible leave arrangements. But more importantly: let's change our attitude to women with families; recognise just how hard it is to balance work and family commitments; and celebrate the unique contribution that women can and do make to the workplace.

When a hip and trendy employer sends the message that it is optimal to work through your child-bearing years, we should question it. Yes, it may be optimal for the company. It may indeed be the best choice for some women. But for the majority of women who do want a family, it can lead to something far worse than a pay gap or a career temporarily put on hold: the pain and regret of being unable to have a longed-for child.