2014年，Facebook和蘋果等公司表示，將會支付女性員工冷凍卵子的費用。消息一經傳出，便迅速引起了抵制。

根據《財富》記者雷·加拉格爾當時的報道，批評者認為這項新福利是“鼓勵女性忽視生物鐘，從而在三十多歲時加倍努力工作的自私舉動。這種行為充滿家長式作風，涉嫌性別歧視，是讓女性避免生育、活在辦公室里的詭計，卻打著關愛女性生育問題的旗號” 。

不過針對在美國和以色列的八家醫院冷凍卵子的150名女性的研究發現，超過90%的受訪者表示，她們無意因為學業或職業生涯而推遲生育。此舉只是為了保留自己的生育能力，因為她們還沒有結婚對象。這些女性還沒找到生命的那一半，所以將卵子冷凍看作為尋覓伴偶爭取時間的手段。

研究報告的第一作者、耶魯大學人類學和國際事務教授瑪西亞·因霍恩表示：“媒體講述的故事一直是職場女性為了職業生涯而推遲生育年齡。”她說，這是錯誤的。“她們希望結婚，或至少（在生育之前）有個對象，只是現在還沒有找到這個人。”本周在日內瓦舉行的歐洲人類生殖與胚胎學會會議上，她對這份尚未發表的報告進行了展示。

一次卵子冷凍的價格大約為1萬美元，這還不包含儲藏費用。此外，女性一般至少要接受兩次卵子冷凍，才能獲得足夠數量的卵子。

接受研究的女性大都接受過高等教育，超過80%的受訪者至少擁有本科學歷。因霍恩猜測，她們找不到對象的原因可能是“不平衡的大學畢業率”。比起男性，女性獲得學士或更高學位的數量更多。

美國國家教育統計中心2017年的報告發現，自2000年以來，25至29歲的女性獲取各級學位的比例都高于男性。去年，這種性別差距在學士學位及以上是8%，在碩士學位及以上是4%。

2015年的著作《約會經濟學》深入討論了找到合適配偶背后的數學問題。作者喬恩·伯格寫道：“大學和畢業后的約會文化，受過大學教育的女性的結婚率降低，以及條件出色的單身男性結婚意愿不足，都是不平衡的性別比和受過高等教育的男性數量不足的副產品。”

因霍恩表示，解決這種失配的辦法之一就是“讓男孩有一個更好的起點”，讓更多男性接受高等教育。不過更全面的方案可能是更新性別角色，以及對于男性和女性各方面的期待。（財富中文網）

譯者：嚴匡正

When companies like Facebook and Apple said in 2014 that they would start covering the cost of egg freezing for women, the backlash was swift.

As Fortune's Leigh Gallagher reported at the time, critics derided the new benefit as "a self-serving move to encourage women to take their eye off the biological clock so that they could double down and work harder throughout their 30s. It was paternalistic, sexist, and a trick to keep women childless and living at the office, all wrapped in the cloak of concern over women’s fertility issues."

But a new study of 150 women who had undertaken elective egg freezing at eight clinics in the United States and Israel found that more than 90% said they were not intentionally postponing their fertility because of education or careers. Rather, they were preserving their fertility because they were single without partners to marry. Women lamented the “missing men” in their lives, viewing egg freezing as a way to buy time while they continued to search for a committed partner.

"In the media, there's been this narrative that career women are putting off having children for the sake of their careers," says Marcia Inhorn, the study's lead author and a professor of anthropology and international affairs at Yale University. That's incorrect, she says. "They want to be married or at least partnered [before having a child] and they haven't been able to find anyone." Inhorn's unpublished study was presented at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Geneva this week.

A round of egg freezing costs approximately $10,000, plus storage fees, and women often need at least two rounds to collect the necessary number of eggs.

Women in the study were highly educated, with more than 80% having earned at least a graduate degree. Their failure to find a partner, Inhorn surmises, points to the "lopsided college graduation rate," in which more women are graduating from college and advanced degree programs than men.

A 2017 report from the National Center for Education Statistics found that since 2000, degree attainment rates among 25- to 29-year-olds have generally been higher for females than for males at each education level. The gender gap last year for students in that age range was about 8 percentage points for bachelor's degrees or higher and 4 percentage points for a master's or higher degree.

In the 2015 book Date-Onomics, which delves into the math behind finding a suitable mate, economics writer Jon Birger writes: “The college and post-college hookup culture, the decline in marriage rates among college-educated women, and the dearth of marriage-material men willing to commit, are all byproducts of lopsided gender ratios and a massive undersupply of college-educated men."

One way to resolve this mismatch is to "get boys off to a better start" so more of them attain higher education, Inhorn says. But a more comprehensive solution may be to update gender roles and what's expected of each sex across the board.