Tales of self-empowerment through digital health technologies: a closer look at ‘Femtech’

Abstract

Femtech technologies, such as period and fertility trackers, promise their users empowerment through reliable knowledge about and control over their bodies and ownership of their procreative health. However, the notion of empowerment through period and fertility apps deserves scrutiny. Based on a thematic analysis of a range of ‘female health’ app promotion materials, we explore the kind of empowerment promised by app providers and point towards significant contradictions and tensions in the discursive tales of empowerment. Building on digital sociology and intersectional feminist scholarship, we observe that the discourse promoting many of the health apps is grounded in exclusionary ontologies, normative femininity, epistemic injustice and heterosexist notions of female sexuality, which undermines the liberational rhetoric of these digital health technologies.