Motherhood on ice: The mating gap and why women freeze their eggs

Marcia Inhorn

Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University

Why are women freezing their eggs in record numbers? Contrary to media reports, which suggest that women’s career ambitions are the main determinant of women’s fertility postponement, women themselves offer different explanations for fertility preservation through egg freezing. The growing momentum toward this new reproductive technology masks an underlying but little discussed global reality—namely, a mating gap, in which women in the United States and more than half the world’s nations (including Australia) are outperforming men in higher education, resulting in the lack of eligible, educated, and equal partners with whom to pursue marriage and childbearing. Although egg freezing is touted for its “revolutionary” potential, it is a costly technological concession to growing gender inequalities, whereby educated women are “buying time” while experiencing reproductive partnership problems beyond their individual control.