As Facebook and Apple take the lead in offering women employees the option of postponing motherhood in lieu of pursuing a career, the debate is if it will really mean emancipation for the women workforce, or is it another ploy to make women fit into corporate roles set by men?

SAIREE CHAHAL// If you look at this move by Facebook and Apple in terms of whether it expands the choices for a woman, I think it does as an option. It is a known fact that women put their plans of starting a family on hold so that they can go out and chase their careers.

If you put it in the benefits basket of maternity, paternity, LGBT and other rights, I feel it’s an excellent option. But if you pitch it as something that is in lieu of, say a maternity leave, it is skewed logic.

So far, it is an option of choice. Right now these companies are offering it as a choice, saying if you want to be on a career track, here is an option you have — you can freeze your eggs. But there are things that don’t get said. I think this needs more debate and discussion.

Having said that, however, does it expand the choice in a corporate context? I think it can be fairly intrusive as a choice. It is like the unsaid norm, and if most people start doing it, or if even some companies start doing it, it becomes a norm. Just like staying late is not a rule but it has become the norm. Thus, it has the danger of falling into that trap.

Back home in India, we don’t have to worry about something like this in the near future. I don’t think we are going to go there. One, because this option of freezing one’s eggs is an expensive procedure. Two, it is hard to do this. Also, the procedure is vague, it’s painful and it also means that a lot of these fail. No one talks about these issues.

Coming back to this option of freezing one’s eggs, however, let me make it clear that it is a part of several options. For instance, enhanced baby care, crèche, maternity leave, flexibility and so on. These are all part of the entire employee benefits basket. But this one move has pretty much bypassed all other benefits. We all know that the flexibility part never really took off in that sense. People in the corporate world never talk about flexibility. In the US, where this is being implemented, maternity leave is a huge thing and most people don’t have it.

From that point of view, the option of choosing to put off motherhood has got a lot of advantages. At the same time, it is a little audacious and fairly impractical. It is not something everybody can choose. I know of some women who have done it but they are rare exceptions.

I also feel women will not opt for this benefit so easily, especially not in India where the business of starting a family or not is decided for you by your family – like everything else.

A percentage of women will, but they will be a small number. It’s like an insurance policy—you hope you don’t ever have to use it. Just like the insurance policy, this is not something lucrative or interesting or fancy. It is painful, it may go wrong and it really needs thinking through about your life and decide whether this is exactly what you want.

I would understand choosing this option if a woman is in a career that is fairly non-negotiable; if you were trying to become a head in the army or an astronaut or if it’s a really high-stress career. Then you have something to come back to. Like I say, it’s an option, it can’t be a norm.

It should never be looked upon as an alternate option whether to adopt, or have a child or have a LGBT spouse. It should never be an alternate to any of that. It is a fairly independent alternate on the spot.

Sairee Chahal is a serial entrepreneur, mentor and workflex evangelist. She is founder, CEO, Sheroes, a company that helps create and enhance work-flex options for women. She is also mother to a feisty seven-year-old daughter. Chahal has also been the finalist for the Cartier Women’s Award initiative for 2012, a TED speaker, on Business Today’s list of “Most Powerful Women in Indian Business 2012” and has been featured on shows such as Young Turks, Pioneering Spirit and What Women Want.

PRANAV KUKRETI// I applaud any instance or format that gives incentives to an employee – be it a man or a woman. It would be a welcome move and I would totally support it. But the way this particular incentive for women to freeze their eggs has been presented is disagreeable to me. First of all, you talk about equality at workplace and yet, you are singling out the women for an incentive.

That is one part. I also smell commercialisation in it. Having a baby now or later should be a matter of freewill, a personal choice. If a woman wants to freeze her eggs and plan a baby at a later date, it should be her wish. With this incentive, we are giving bait to these women. Is that the right thing to do? You are tempting them by saying if you work hard, we will give you this option of putting off motherhood.

The success rate of freezing your eggs now and having a child later is pretty low – it is between 2 and 12 per cent. But you are not communicating that to the people. There are also so many risks associated with this. There is a way in which a man or a woman’s body responds to things like this and it is not necessarily a healthy way.

This option to freeze one’s eggs was actually devised for women in case of HIV or cancer. You freeze your eggs in the hope of some kind of medical intervention that might help you fight cancer or make you HIV-free. In such cases, it is a scientifically healthy thing. Here the reason to do so is totally commercial. There are so many issues involved with not having children at a certain age.

Medical journals are choc-a-bloc with information about the benefits of breastfeeding a child and having children on time and so on. On the other hand, you see these capitalist moves.

I see the double face of companies over here. Why, for instance, is no one is talking about what after the woman has frozen her eggs for, say, five years and then has a child? Does she suddenly quit her job then? There’s no mention of maternity leave, postdelivery leave. You also need to nurture a child. It isn’t about just having the baby. What happens to her career after the baby?

I am also of the opinion that having a child is a big responsibility and a personal choice. Why should a company interfere in such a personal choice? Raising a child is so different from having a child. The real job starts after that. What are the options then?

In my opinion, employees, be it men or women, should be given flexible working hours and not be made slaves or given such small temptations. There are people who are working from home and doing a great job. Some of the better companies are doing that. We are only talking about bigger companies such as Facebook and Apple. I know about so many Indian and multinational companies that are the unsung heroes of human resource management. They give women employees the choice of working from home after having a baby.

A company works on productivity, efficiency, profitability and taking care of the people working there. Why not let the woman work from home for five years; so what if she is working for Facebook or Apple? You have 3G and 4G, there’s internet connectivity in the remotest part of the world. Let new mothers work from home.

More thought should be put on ways to monitor productivity. You have biometric scans such as thumb impressions, eye impressions or simple log-ins .

There should also be a system to monitor an employee’s output. For journalists, there should be quality and quantity of words you have written. For software professionals, the quantity and quality of code that you have written. If you are working for a sales company, then it is the amount of money you have generated for a company. Why should a carer be only about going to a fancy campus all the time?

With this nifty telling of the story about giving woman an incentive to freeze their eggs is like making an ad campaign of human relations. You are giving it some fancy word and asking women to take the bait. It is like a Burger King ad for me. It is wrong for me in every way.

The thought of human resources has to be non-commercial and human-centric. It can’t just be about money. You have to listen to the people. Flexible working hours across the board will work wonderfully. I also feel you are ostracising women by such an option. Why should we in the corporate world be mean? Why should there be harshness? We can be kind and humane and yet be demanding when it comes to performance. After all, every human being likes a productive atmosphere.

Believe me, it is feasible and achievable. In my company Treks ‘n Rapids, for instance, we sincerely and honestly practice what we preach. We don’t treat men and women differently, which means men get the same kind of work flexibility as women.

A management graduate from NMIMS, Pranav Kukreti is Co-founder and Director, Treks ‘n Rapids, one of India’s premier adventure sports and experiential learning companies, which has been voted India’s number one adventure sports company seven times between 2005 and 2013. Kukreti is also an active member of CII and has been convenor of panel on tourism development (Uttarakhand) for over five years.