Company-Sponsored Fertility Benefits: A Gift-Exchange and Contextual Intersectionality Informed ‘FAiRE’ Framework Guiding Design and Implementation

Managing the work-fertility interface is a major challenge for organizations when implementing fertility policies. These policies cover a broad spectrum of areas including clinical treatments, preservation and storage of eggs and sperm, preimplantation and diagnostics, and non-clinical family-building assistance. They also differ from standard work-life policies due to the need for intensive medical integration, strict legal-privacy issues and high financial outlay by organizations and employees The implementation of these benefits additionally made more complex due to their interaction with intersectional, organizational and macro-level context. To understand these complexities, we gift exchange theory and a contextual intersectionality perspective to propose a ‘FAiRE’ framework. We highlight the theoretical complexities and tensions in using this framework and we surface important theoretical and practical implications.