Fertility Isn't Just a Women's Issue — And I Say That as a Woman Who Went Through It
When most people think about fertility challenges at work, they picture a woman. Probably in her thirties or forties, probably going through IVF, probably trying to hold it together in a meeting while quietly counting down to her next scan. I know that picture well because I was in it. And it's not wrong, it's just nowhere near the whole story.
I've been writing about this over on the Fertility Matters at Work blog this week, and I wanted to bring it here too because it's something I feel strongly about as a coach and, honestly, as someone who went through it in a fairly heteronormative, very female-centric way and still managed to miss how many other people were going through something equally hard, completely invisibly.
1 in 6 people globally are affected by infertility. Not 1 in 6 women. 1 in 6 people. Men represent half of all infertility cases. Solo parenting has more than tripled in a decade. 77% of LGBTQ+ people aged 18 to 35 are either parents or thinking about becoming one. These are not edge cases. These are colleagues sitting in the same open plan office, taking annual leave for clinic appointments because nothing in the company policy covers them, managing the whole thing in silence because nothing has ever suggested they should expect otherwise.
What struck me most when I was pulling the piece together was something we hear again and again from men and non-carrying partners specifically — that their colleagues ask how their partner is. Nobody asks how they are. I find that heartbreaking, and also completely unsurprising, because if the language in a policy says "women undergoing fertility treatment" rather than "employees undergoing fertility treatment", the message is already out before anyone's said a word.
I coach women, primarily — that's my specialism and my lived experience — but I think about this a lot, because the women I work with aren’t always going through this alone, and the people alongside them are often absorbing a significant amount of it in silence too. Workplace culture that only makes space for one version of a fertility journey doesn't serve anyone particularly well, including the women it was designed around.
If you want to read the full piece, including the business case for why this matters and what organisations can actually do about it, it's over on the Fertility Matters at Work website — I'll link it below. And if any of this resonates with your own experience at work, whether you're the one going through treatment or the one nobody thought to ask about, I'd genuinely love to hear from you.
Read the full piece on the Fertility Matters at Work website →
