Un-tracking menopause: How not using self-tracking technologies mediates women’s self-experiences in menopause

Abstract

Self-tracking in general, and by women in particular is increasingly researched. In the literature, however, women’s interactions with selftracking technologies in menopause—a change that (almost) every woman will go through—is largely taken for granted. This paper addresses this lacuna by asking whether and how menopausal women use self-tracking technologies, and how this (non-) usage mediates their self-experiences. In doing so, it elaborates on another understudied phenomenon: the constitutive significance of “un-tracking”—that is, of various shades and levels of not using self-tracking technologies—in menopause. Most of the 13 interviewed women in this study reported that they stopped, drastically reduced, or resisted self-tracking in menopause. By framing the discussion of these accounts of “un-tracking” within the tradition of post-phenomenology and a phenomenology of situated bodily self-awareness, we show that these women experience their bodies as (1) wise and eu-appearing, (2) unmoldable and dysappearing, and (3) longing for disappearance. Herein, their experientially mediating un-tracking practices are temporally and socio-culturally contextualized in complex ways and bear substantial existential significance. This study establishes the potential harmful ways in which self-tracking mediates self-experiences, as well as the fruitful ways in which un-tracking may do so. Against the background of this observation, this paper makes an appeal to take a step back from uncritically celebrating self-tracking in healthcare contexts, and critically evaluates whether (the promotion of) using (more) self-tracking technologies in these contexts is desirable to begin with.