There's a financial burden quietly hitting women harder than almost anyone else right now, and it has nothing to do with the gender pay gap. It's what some are calling the "egg freezing tax" - the steep, largely out-of-pocket cost of a medical procedure that over 40,000 women in the US chose to undergo in 2023 alone.
Writing for Fast Company, entrepreneur and founder Alicia Wallace makes a compelling argument: fertility benefits aren't a perk. They're infrastructure. And corporate America is long overdue in building them.
Why egg freezing is becoming mainstream
The rise in egg freezing isn't just a trend driven by career-focused women pushing pause on motherhood. It reflects something broader and more complex happening in modern life. Fertility rates are declining across the board. More people are delaying family building for financial, personal, or health-related reasons. And a growing number of women are choosing to become single mothers by choice - on their own terms, on their own timeline.
Egg freezing, Wallace notes, is a safe and proven way to preserve more options. It's not about avoiding family - it's about having more say in when and how that family happens.
The cost problem nobody's solving
Here's where the "tax" comes in. As inflation pushes the price of everything higher, the cost of egg freezing - which can run anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 or more when you factor in medication and storage - remains almost entirely uninsured for most Americans. That burden falls squarely on women, at a time in their lives when they're often still building financial stability.
It's a compounding disadvantage. Women already navigate wage gaps and career interruptions related to caregiving. Adding a five-figure fertility decision to that list, with no workplace support, makes the playing field even less level.
Fertility as the new 401(k)
Wallace frames fertility benefits the way many forward-thinking HR leaders are starting to see them - as a foundational part of a competitive benefits package, not a luxury add-on. Just as retirement savings plans became a standard expectation in the modern workplace, she argues that family-building support should follow.
Companies that invest in fertility benefits signal something important to their workforce: that life outside the office matters, that employees are whole people with futures worth supporting, and that retaining talented women means meeting them where they actually are.
For employers wondering where to start, the conversation is already happening. The question is whether they'll lead it - or wait until it becomes a retention crisis.
