The contribution of data to feminist transformation of women’s rights to health

Abstract

Digital technologies and data science have evolved rapidly. But how does the digital evolution affect women’s rights? Bunch argued that, to implement women’s rights, it was first necessary to observe how they are violated (Bunch, 1990). This article examines how femtec’s apps work, delivering reproductive and sexual health services to millions of women. Specifically, it analyzes the data collection permissions of 45 femtech apps to assess what the platform intends to do with the personal data collected and its objectives. To understand how these apps use data, we explored the goals of these apps in data collection and whether data could be collected and used to transform women’s health. Thus, this work is structured in four sections. First, a theoretical review of Bunch’s proposal and its contribution to data feminism is raised. Second, the potential for feminist transformation of human rights using digital technologies is discussed, particularly in women’s health. The third section details the current use of health data captured by health apps. This article ends by drawing the main conclusions of the analysis and providing recommendations for a feminist transformation of data activism from a human rights perspective.