Facebook and Apple are in a race to recruit more top female talent and both are offering more perks for women employees.

The two Silicon Valley companies are helping their female employees pay for freezing their eggs, a medical process known as oocyte cryopreservation. This means that female employees can delay having children and continue working during the most fertile phase of their lives.

The process involves women in their peak years of fertility taking hormones in order to produce more mature eggs than the ones they would naturally produce during their monthly menstrual cycle. These mature eggs are harvested and frozen in a fertility clinic. The procedure takes about 10 to 15 minutes, with the patient sedated.

Facebook already started the program this January while Apple will start their own program next year. The cost of egg-freezing could be around $20,000, with an additional annual storage fee of $500. The eggs can be kept frozen for up to 10 years, according to The Verge.

Advocates of this technology praised the efforts of Facebook and Apple and their move to attract more female employees.

Apple released a statement saying that they are expanding their benefits for their female employees and have extended their policy on maternity leave. Facebook, on the other hand, confirmed that they instituted the program in response to employee requests.

Egg-freezing is a good option for women who want to delay having children and for women who need to undergo medical treatments that might affect their fertility such as cancer and other illnesses.

However, some are saying that the process is very costly and still unreliable when it comes to getting pregnant, and therefore it is still not recommended for career women. Others say that it encourages the option of delaying childbirth and supports a workplace that is not supportive of employees having children early in their careers. Those people generally think that Apple and Facebook should invest in more flexible work and life options for their employees.