When reproductive and working times collide: sponsored egg freezing and the manipulation of human reproduction”

Abstract (English)

Egg freezing, or oocyte cryopreservation -the biomedical process of extracting, freezing, and storing eggs to preserve fertility -is increasingly pursued for both medical and non-medical reasons. While some women undergo the procedure as a necessity before fertility-threatening treatments such as chemotherapy, others elect to do so to delay reproduction in response to ageing and life course constraints. However, such choices are far from individual or purely medical; they are deeply shaped by broader institutional, ideological, and temporal forces. This paper critically examines the emergent practice of sponsored egg freezing (SEF)—where employers subsidise elective egg freezing -as a site where the temporalities of reproductive life and working life collide (Milman et al., 2017). Drawing on ethnographic research with working women undergoing SEF, we explore how reproductive, contractual, and career times are commodified and negotiated within organisational regimes (Andrade and Cunha, 2021). Rather than framing SEF solely as a reproductive technology, we situate it as a cultural artefact to manipulate time and contemporary labour relations, biopolitical governance, and gendered expectations of productivity and deferral (Grimshaw and Rubery, 2015). Engaging with anthropological literature on reproductive governance, critiques of biomedicine, and organisational ethnography, we argue that SEF embodies a dual dynamic: it promises liberalisation from reproductive time while simultaneously extending managerial control over women's biological futures. As a human resource policy, it reflects and reproduces the logics of late-capitalist work cultures that valorise uninterrupted productivity and individualised risk management. We conclude that without addressing the structural inequalities and precarities shaping women’s reproductive choices, the institutionalisation of SEF risks entrenching reproductive injustice under the guise of empowerment.