Eurograd message

                Who is FemTech for?: Intersectional Interventions in Womens Digital Health
Edited by Dr. Lindsay Balfour

Project Description

This edited collection draws from cultural studies and feminist science and
technology studies to offer a timely and exiting intervention into the growing
field of womens 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. Moreover, while the industry, with a (2019) global market share of
18.75B (USD), is predicted to be worth 60B by 2027 (Emergen, 2020), this
occupies a small share of the overall digital health market, which is
estimated to grow from 84B (USD) to 221B (USD) in the same time span. Although
the availability of FemTech has been increasing over the last decade, the
COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for discreet, portable, and
accessible digital tools that can be used in a self-monitoring capacity as a
response to an absence of access to regular healthcare providers. Yet while
COVID-19 has facilitated the growth of FemTech, it has also exacerbated and
exposed significant gaps in the industry.

Whether a lack of critical literacy around digital health, design and
aesthetic impediments, the reality that womens symptoms and pain are not
taken seriously, or the fact that most FemTech products still presume a white,
middle class, heterosexual, reproductive, and able-bodied user, it is
problematic that women (particularly those in underserved or emerging markets)
still have unequal access to basic reproductive healthcare and womens health
technologies (Wiese, 2021). Moreover, the FemTech industry as a whole exposes
a more widespread and systemic series of gaps within STEM (Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). This volume aims to explore FemTech
within the context of Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FTST), whereby
the entanglements of race, class, gender, ability, sexuality and other social
and cultural identities are brought to the fore. If STS is inherently the
consideration of the creation, development, and consequences of science and
technology in their historical, cultural, and social contexts, then this
collection asks, to borrow in part from Sara Daz, what role can
technoscience play in the movements to achieve gender justice? and how are
the operations of power and privileged exacerbated and challenged within the
womens digital health milleu? (2020). In other words: Who is FemTech for?

This project, then, brings the sociology of health and gender into
conversation with digital culture and intelligent healthcare to respond to the
gaps in womens access to self-monitored technologies of wellbeing, and in
consideration of intersectional marginalizations within both the health and
technology sectors where racialized and low-income women suffer
disproportionately. By addressing the gaps in FemTech research and
socio-cultural barriers to access, this volume will critique the forms of
knowledge and experience produced through medical and cultural discourses
regarding womens bodies to both highlight the inequalities in womens digital
health, and imagine alternative models which optimise technology for women in
a way that is safe, accessible, and inclusive.

As products that simultaneously require intimate access and produce intimate
results, wearable, implantable, and ingestible technologies should be desired,
but with caution. The knowledge produced by these devices allows users to
experience technology at the level of the body in a way that seems safe,
intimate, and helpful but the biometric practices of such devices risk
subscribing to gendered and patriarchal norms of knowledge and surveillance.
Indeed ,the histories of Science and Technology Studies, and feminist STS in
particular, tell us that women  and especially women of colour  have always
been excluded from the medical discourses paradoxically conceived around
them.

Given, then, the gaps in investment and quality control, and taking seriously
the social barriers to access, this project asks: who is FemTech really for?
In the academic literature, for example, little critique is given to the
intersections of race, class, sexuality and ability in products that largely
assume a white, heterosexual, affluent, childbearing, and able-bodied user. As
such, FemTech leaves out a significant portion of the global female
population, despite its potential to positively affect the health and
well-being of women around the world, particularly where class stratification,
indigeneity, and other social challenges exclude many women from this
burgeoning market while simultaneously making them more vulnerable to harm and
illness. While FemTech Collectives Annual report (2021) acknowledges that
women are much more than their reproductive capabilities, and womens health
goes beyond the needs of fertility and reproduction, more needs to be done to
limit the barriers many women face in accessing these products due to a
diversity of marginalizations based on race, socioeconomic status,
non-conforming gender and sexuality, (dis)ability and neurodiversity, and so
on. Ultimately, this project aims to be holistic in approaching these gaps, to
expose the lack of diversity and accessibility in womens digital healthcare,
and prompt a series of critical questions across the FemTech sector as a
whole.

Chapter submissions are invited from a range of disciplinary backgrounds
including healthcare, digital media, the medical humanities, cultural studies,
science and technology studies, gender studies, disability studies, as well as
regional studies focused on the underserved areas of womens digital health.
We take FemTech to include digital and/or technological interventions marketed
to women in the broadest sense including both software and hardware. Possible
topics might include:

  *   Biometric surveillance
  *   Consumer culture and FemTech as commodity
  *   Anti-violence or anti-assault tech
  *   Self-monitoring
  *   Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in womens digital health
  *   Sexual health
  *   Mental health
  *   Taboos and stigmas
  *   Historical analyses of womens health and emergent technologies
  *   Alternative digital health models
  *   Research, innovation, and investment in FemTech
  *   Regional or comparative analyses, particularly in Global South, ASEAN,
MENA, South American or Indigenous contexts

Prospective authors are asked to submit a 500 word abstract and 150 word bio
to Lindsay.Balfour@coventry.ac.uk by
June 20, 2022.

This collection is being developed with strong interest already expressed by
Palgrave who are looking to expand their Science and Technology Studies list
with regards to womens health. It will be edited by Dr. Lindsay Balfour,
Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures
(CPC) at Coventry University. Dr. Balfours research draws on the relationship
between humans and machines (HCI) and employs an intersectional feminist and
cultural studies perspective to look at digital intimacies within science and
technology studies. Currently, she is conducting feminist analyses of
surveillance capitalism and embodied computing including the concept of
tracking through wearables, implantables, and ingestibles.

Her ongoing project aims to engage academics, policymakers, and industry
stakeholders and will assess the extent to which women's digital health might
address barriers such as the lack of research, investment, quality thresholds,
and diversity, while remaining safe, accessible, and sustainable. The project
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.

Dr. Balfour is a member of the Postdigital Intimacies Research Network and the
author of Hospitality in a Time of Terror, published in 2017 and nominated for
the Gustave O. Arit Award for best first book in the Humanities. Her second
monograph Future Strangers: Intimacy and Hospitality in Human-Computer
Interaction is under contract at Palgrave McMillan. Other recent publications
include #TimesUp for Siri and Alexa: Sexual Violence and Virtual Domestic
Assistants and the forthcoming The Fit Mans Burden: Gender and Commodity
Racism in Biometric Fitness Trackers. Dr. Balfour also has experience working
with diverse stakeholders and constituent groups including educators,
curators, legal experts, government officials, community organizers, and
non-profit leaders.



Works Cited

Daz, Sara (2020). Science, Technology and Gender. Companion to Womens and
Gender Studies. Ed. Nancy Naples. Oxford: Wiley Blakwell.

Esmonde, Katelyn (2020). Theres only so much data you can handle in your
life: Accommodating and resisting self-surveillance in womens running and
fitness practices. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 12.1:
76-90. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1617188

Lupton, Deborah (2017). The Quantified Self. Cambridge: Polity.

N.a. (2020). Femtech Global Market Map. Fermata Inc.
https://sg.hellofermata.com/blogs/blog/femtech-global-market-map-released-by-
fermata-inc-nov-2020

N.a. (2020). Femtech Market to Reach USD 60.01 Billion by 2027. Cicion.
https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/femtech-market-to-reach-usd-60-01-
billion-by-2027-cagr-of-15-6-emergen-research-899205870.html

N.a. (2021). FemTech Collective Market Report.
www.femtechcollective.com

Thomas, Jenny (2021). FemTech has a key part to play in womens health
strategy. Digital Health London.
https://www.digitalhealth.net/2021/06/femtech-has-a-key-part-to-play-in-women
s-health-strategy/




Dr. Lindsay Balfour
Assistant Professor of Digital Media
Centre for Postdigital
Cultures
Coventry University

[cidimage001.png@01D7AADC.76D693A0]

'

Queen's Award for Enterprise
International Trade 2022


Ranked in the top 50% of UK universities for research power
Times Higher Education analysis of REF 2021


Joint top Modern University for Career Prospects
Guardian University Guide 2022


Top 30 in the World for International Students(ratio)
QS World University Rankings 2022

NOTICE

This message and any files transmitted with it is intended for the addressee
only and may contain information that is confidential or privileged.
Unauthorised use is strictly prohibited. If you are not the addressee, you
should not read, copy, disclose or otherwise use this message, except for the
purpose of delivery to the addressee.

Any views or opinions expressed within this e-mail are those of the author and
do not necessarily represent those of Coventry University.
_______________________________________________
EASST's Eurograd mailing list
Eurograd (at) lists.easst.net
Unsubscribe or edit subscription options: http://lists.easst.net/listinfo.cgi/eurograd-easst.net

Meet us via https://twitter.com/STSeasst

Report abuses of this list to Eurograd-owner@lists.easst.net