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FemTech

Intersectional Interventions in Women’s Digital Health

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Editors:
  1. Lindsay Anne Balfour

    1. Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University, Coventry, UK

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  • The first substantial volume on the FemTech industry from a feminist Science and Technology Studies perspective
  • Offers depth and breath, looking beyond the dominance of the Western FemTech industry
  • Brings together bold contributions from a range of disciplinary backgrounds

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Table of contents (14 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xx
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Who Is FemTech For?

    • Lindsay Balfour
    Pages 1-19

  3. Conclusion: Can the “Fempire” Strike Back?

    • Lindsay Balfour
    Pages 321-331

  4. Constructing a Critical FemTech Discourse

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 21-21
      Download chapter PDF

    2. Hysteria Under Watch: Biological Essentialism and Surveillance in Menstrual Tracking Applications

      • Nik’Talia Jules
      Pages 23-45

    3. Reinventing the Beauty Myth? FemTech’s Cost to the Consumer

      • Hannah L. Westwood
      Pages 47-71

    4. Fertile Becoming: Reproductive Temporalities with/in Tracking Technologies

      • Lara Reime, Marisa Cohn, Vasiliki Tsaknaki
      Pages 73-97

  5. FemTech at the Margins

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 99-99
      Download chapter PDF

    2. One Size (Doesn’t) Fit All: A Closer Look at FemTech Apps and Datafied Reproductive Body Projects in India

      • Paro Mishra, Ravinder Kaur, Shambhawi Vikram
      Pages 101-130

    3. Providing Care When There Is No Cure: How FemTech Can Help Destigmatize Autoimmune Diseases

      • Georgia M. Roberts
      Pages 131-143

    4. The Insta-Trainer: A Study of How Instagram Is Used as a Biopedagogical Tool for Health and Wellbeing Among Young Women in Qatar

      • Sara Al Derham
      Pages 145-165

    5. Hoop Dreams or Hoop Nightmares: Athletics, Fitness Tracking, and the Surveillance of the Black Body

      • Rachel D. Roberson
      Pages 167-184

    6. FemTech and Taboo Topics: Raaji as a Tool for Educating Women in Pakistan

      • Khawar Latif Khan, Farah Azhar
      Pages 185-210

    7. FemTech in (and for) Emerging Markets: Disruption in Kenya’s “Silicon Savannah” Nairobi

      • Sarah Seddig
      Pages 211-233

  6. FemTech to (Over)come: “New Methods, Technoselves and Data Sovereignty”

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 235-235
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    2. Wearing Danger: Surveillance, Control, and Quantified Healthism in American Medicine

      • Rebecca Monteleone, Ally Day
      Pages 237-255

    3. Between Liberation and Control: Mixing Methods to Investigate How Users Experience Menstrual Cycle Tracking Applications

      • Lisa Stuifzand, Rik Smit
      Pages 257-289

    4. Using and Interpreting FemTech Data: (Self-)Knowledge, Empowerment, and Sovereignty

      • Stefano Canali, Chris Hesselbein
      Pages 291-319

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 333-336
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Keywords

About this book

This edited collection draws from cultural studies and Feminist Science and Technology Studies to offer a timely and exciting intervention into the growing field of women’s digital health. It explores the intersection of gender and embodied computing, with particular attention to access barriers and the forms of biometric surveillance that operate in wearables, ingestibles, and embeddables marketed to women (the industry generally known as “FemTech”). While the most utilized and profitable FemTech products include ovulation and fitness trackers, reproductive technologies, contraceptive microchips, and “smart” pills, this only represents a fraction of health concerns affecting women.

This volume aims to explore FemTech within the context of Feminist Science and Technology Studies, whereby the entanglements of race, class, gender, ability, sexuality and other social and cultural identities are brought to the fore. By addressing the gaps in FemTech research and socio-cultural barriers to access, this volume critiques the forms of knowledge and experience produced through medical and cultural discourses regarding women’s bodies to both highlight the inequalities in women’s digital health, and imagine alternative models which optimise technology for women in a way that is safe, accessible, and inclusive.


Editors and Affiliations

  • Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University, Coventry, UK

    Lindsay Anne Balfour

About the editor

Lindsay Anne Balfour is Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures at Coventry University. She is an experienced researcher, public speaker, and author with international experience in the non-profit sector and formal academia. Her research draws on Feminist Science and Technology Studies to examine the relationship between Feminine Technologies (“FemTech”) and the forms of knowledge and experience produced by and about women’s bodies. Her work offers wider benefits concerning the global health of women, such as those outlined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals regarding Women and Girls, and in particular targets focusing on sexual and reproductive health.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: FemTech

  • Book Subtitle: Intersectional Interventions in Women’s Digital Health

  • Editors: Lindsay Anne Balfour

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5605-0

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-99-5604-3Published: 24 December 2023

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-981-99-5607-4Due: 24 January 2024

  • eBook ISBN: 978-981-99-5605-0Published: 23 December 2023

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XX, 336

  • Number of Illustrations: 21 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Sociology, general, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Cultural Studies, Cultural Studies

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