Femtech apps and quantification of the reproductive body in India: Issues and concerns

Abstract

This article examines datafication of the reproductive body in India through use of femtech mobile phone applications (henceforth, apps). Femtech apps quantify reproductive processes such as periods, conception, pregnancy and hormonal health and promise their users greater ‘self-awareness’ and ‘control’ through ‘self-management’. Most studies on femtech refer to users in the Global North, while there are few studies on femtech adoption in the developing countries. This article, based on qualitative and quantitative data, and informed by a feminist technoscience framework, illustrates how femtech’s promise of empowerment through datafication of reproduction is fraught with contradictions and tensions, and has exclusionary and risky consequences for Indian users. It examines the gendered technological landscape’s bearing on concrete practices of design and innovation, and shows how femtech reinforces gendered social hierarchies rather than dismantling them and liberating users. Under datafication, health standards become extremely narrowly defined, marginalising those whose reproductive health trajectories may not conform to normative standards. Femtech’s proliferation in India has also failed to recognise the structural inequalities and socio-economic disadvantages that characterise healthcare access. Finally, the legal grey areas and ill-defined data privacy policies in India allow for easy commercialisation of users’ bodies and personal data possible. This further undermines the liberational rhetoric of femtech, as data privacy breaches are embodied forms of violence with consequences for users’ bodily autonomy and dignity. Femtech’s pursuit of maximising commercial gain is thus at odds with the feminist technoscience project of minimising women’s exploitation and oppression.