Fertility and Work: Your Experience Matters, Tell Us About It

Are you based in Europe, in employment, and going through – or have you been through – an infertility diagnosis or treatment? There is a European survey waiting for your voice.

Infertility diagnosis or treatment and work rarely get talked about in the same breath. Yet the reality for millions of people across Europe is that they are navigating hormone injections, last-minute clinical appointments, and the emotional weight of hope and uncertainty, all while trying to show up, perform, and not let anything show at work.

Fertility Europe, the pan-European network of patient organisations present in 29 countries, has launched Infertility in the Workplace: the first large-scale, Europe-wide survey dedicated to the relationship between infertility diagnosis or treatment and the workplace.

The survey is available in 20 languages and will gather the experiences of workers across the continent. Yours could be one of them.

Who can take part?

Everyone. The survey is open to both women and men who are working, or were working, while going through infertility, medically assisted reproduction or fertility preservation. It is easy to forget that fertility affects men too: those who need treatment themselves or accompany their partner to appointments, who live through the anxiety of waiting, who have had to rearrange their schedules or take unexplained time off. Your experience is just as important!

What we want to know

The survey is interested in what working life actually looks like during fertility treatment - not just formal policies, but the everyday reality on the ground.

We want to hear how you managed your time: did you use annual leave or unpaid days off for clinical appointments? Did you rely on a doctor's note to explain absences? Did you arrange flexible hours with your employer, even informally? And at work itself: did you ever need a private space to do an injection, or a quiet room to take a confidential call with your clinic?

We are interested in everything you used, including arrangements that were not specifically designed for fertility treatment, but helped anyway: remote working, sick leave, flexible scheduling, or simply a manager who chose not to ask too many questions. We also want to know when solutions were not there: when you had to manage alone, when you felt invisible, when you were afraid to tell the truth to your employer.

And we want to know how you felt. The emotional burden, the fear of judgement, the sense of carrying something invisible into every working day — all of this is part of the experience and deserves to be heard.

Why taking part makes a difference

Our survey findings will be made available to patient associations and gender equality organisations across Europe, who can use them to open concrete conversations with employers, trade unions, national institutions and policymakers about what it really means to support employees through fertility treatment.

But the impact goes further. Your responses will become part of a European report drawing on the voices of thousands of workers across the continent. This report arrives at a critical legislative moment: the European Commission is preparing the Quality Jobs Act, expected by the end of 2026, which will update EU rules on working conditions and workers' rights.

The findings will be presented directly to European institutions to ensure that fertility treatment is not left out of that legislation — and that employers across Europe understand what is expected of them and are supported in supporting their employees.

Your story, anonymous and protected, becomes part of a collective body of evidence that can genuinely change the rules.

Take the survey

The survey is anonymous, takes around 10-15 minutes, and can be completed on your phone or computer.

Take part in the Infertility in the Workplace 2026 survey in English, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish or Turkish

Take part in the Infertility in the Workplace 2026 survey in English, Bulgarian, Czech, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Croatian, Dutch, Polish or Serbian

Please share this with anyone you know, colleagues, friends, family members, who might have a story to tell. The more voices that reach us from across Europe, the stronger the message that will arrive in Brussels.

Fertility Europe is the pan-European network of 35 fertility patient organisations in 29 countries. The Fertility@Work project is supported by institutional partners and civil society organisations across Europe.