Datafied body projects in India: Femtech and the rise of reproductive surveillance in the digital era

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the growing industry of digital self-tracking technologies designed for the female body, popularly known as femtech. Focusing mainly on reproductive technologies and applications, it situates femtech within the broader historical context of excluding women from research on medicine and clinical trials. Approaching femtech as datafied body projects, we argue that, even though these digital reproductive health technologies enhance user capacity for self-knowledge by quantifying reproduction, they raise apprehensions about issues of reproductive surveillance. These datafied body projects are not only technology-driven, but are also shaped by the neo-liberal ethos in which the state-corporate nexus shifts the onus of health management to participatory individuated forms, deemed as “empowering,” while simultaneously harnessing this user-generated data for control and profit. Finally, we argue that merely representing women in all spheres of health and procuring data on the female body is insufficient to address the larger concerns of gender in health. A more close-grained approach that addresses the structural embeddedness of exploitation of the female body for profit and the masculine epistemology around which these technologies are built is necessary.