Opinion Having it all

Truth be told, no one can have it all, not even Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi, who, poor woman, got sent out to buy a bottle of milk by her mother at the end of a long day, when all she wanted to do was to brag about her promotion. Unless, of course, you are a man — and are happy to let the wee ones go without it. But Facebook and Apple are giving the hugely talented women working for them a choice — if you so want, postpone the disruption of childbirth and parenting by freezing your eggs, we’ll pay for it. And hurrah for that. The prime years of a woman’s professional work life are also the best time for birthing and bringing up children. So, if Facebook and Apple, both companies where men outnumber women by a long shot, are rolling out perks to attract and retain their talent, Silicon Valley will be none the worse for it.

For women, of course, the option of putting the biological clock on snooze till a time when they are financially more secure and stable is potentially liberating. As a recent, and rather optimistic Bloomberg Businessweek cover urged: “Freeze Your Eggs, Free Your Career”. Real life being slightly more complicated than catchy headlines, however, a small voice of disquiet remains. Having offered such an incentive, how will the companies react to women who choose to have children at the conventional age? When to have a child is a decision influenced by a woman’s health and energy as much as her ambition and her company’s need of her talent. Will fiercely competitive — and largely masculine — workplaces accept women who insist on having a go at parental fulfilment and professional success at the same time?

Advertisement

One of the wonderful things of modern parenting is that it has been unshackled from sureties. There are as many kinds of mothers as there are people: ambitious and laid back, young as well as old. Can Silicon Valley lean in and accommodate this diversity of individual choices? Can they have it all?