FemTech: The Risks of Women's Health Self-Management in a Digital World

Digital health technologies are transforming how people manage their health by offering easy access to tools for tracking and monitoring a variety of different health indicators, capabilities previously available only to healthcare providers. Among recent innovations is FemTech (Female Technology), a rapidly growing industry specifically marketed to women with personalized tools to support their unique health and wellness needs, including features such as fitness tracking, reproductive health monitoring, and mental well-being support. However, in order to function effectively, these tools require access to sensitive personal health information (PHI) which raises serious privacy concerns, especially in a new and largely unregulated industry that has already faced criticism for data security issues and sharing information with third parties without user consent (Alfawzan et al., 2022; Erickson et al., 2022). For women who use these tools, the privacy stakes are even higher because data breaches and misuse can lead to professional, personal, and legal consequences (Mehrnezhad & Almeida, 2023). Yet despite these risks, women continue to use and share their PHI with FemTech applications, even after widespread calls to delete them due to data use concerns following recent abortion law changes in the United States (Cao et al., 2024). This paradox reflects the complex tension women face as they decide whether to use these applications, one that involves navigating the vulnerability of sharing PHI, placing trust in digital platforms to protect their data, and seeking greater control over their health. This study investigates the factors that influence women’s decisions to share PHI on FemTech platforms to assist them in managing their health. We specifically focus on understanding how women assess risk and develop trust in digital health tools that claim to address their specific needs. The study contributes to the study of gender and information privacy by centering on the FemTech context which provides an opportunity to explore women’s specific experiences and considerations when engaging with technologies designed explicitly for them, an area that has received limited attention. Additionally, we contribute to the long-standing research and data gap in women’s health by highlighting how digital platforms can responsibly manage PHI to help women improve their physical and mental well-being. References Alfawzan, N., Christen, M., Spitale, G., & Biller-Andorno, N. (2022). Privacy, data sharing, and data security policies of women's mHealth apps: Scoping review and content analysis. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 10(5). https://doi.org/10.2196/33735 Cao, J. X., Laabadli, H., Mathis, C., Stern, R., & Emami-Naeini, P. (2024). “I deleted it after the overturn of Roe v. Wade": Understanding women's privacy concerns toward period-tracking apps in the post Roe v. Wade era. Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Sytems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642042 Erickson, J., Yuzon, J. Y., & Bonaci, T. (2022). What you do not expect when you are expecting: Privacy analysis of FemTech. IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, 3(2), 121-131. https://doi.org/10.1109/TTS.2022.3160928 Mehrnezhad, M., & Almeida, T. (2023). "My sex-related data is more sensitive than my financial data and I want the same level of security and privacy": User risk perceptions and protective actions in female-oriented technologies. Proceedings of the 2023 European Symposium on Usable Security. https://doi.org/10.1145/3617072.3617100