Are women being forced to freeze their eggs?

“No woman goes running with thrill into egg-freezing,” explains Professor Marcia Inhorn. “A lot of these women would rather not be doing it.” So why are they? If a spate of recent reports is to be believed, career progression is a key driver of “social egg-freezing”, used by women who wish to delay having a baby until later in life. After all, it fits into the Girlboss narrative: “Freeze Your Eggs, Free Your Career,” as Bloomberg Businessweek put it in 2014.

A decade later, women seem to have taken this advice to heart. Between 2019 and 2021, egg-freezing cycles surged by 64%, making it the fastest growing fertility treatment type in the UK. In 2011, there were just 373 cycles; by 2021, there were 4,215. Nor is it now uncommon for women at gold-plated companies to receive extensive “fertility benefits”: Spotify gives female employees £40,000 towards treatment, while Apple and Meta subsidise egg-freezing for up to £16,000.