Current Sociology

Please welcome our Sociologist of the Month for October 2025, Paro Mishra (Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi, India). Her article for Current Sociology Femtech apps and quantification of the reproductive body in India: Issues and concerns, co-authored with Ravinder Kaur, Shambhawi Vikram and Prashastika Sharma is Free Access this month.

Paro Mishra

Could you please tell us about yourself? How did you come to your field of study?

P. Mishra: I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIITD). My interest in femtech and digital reproductive health management since 2022 is an offshoot of my larger interest in technological management for the female body and its impact on gender relations, family/kinship. In my doctoral research, for instance, I examined how New Reproductive Technologies (NRTs) and female selective abortions are creating highly masculinised population structures in North India and how this transformation impacts gender relations, marriage practices and intimate relationships. Shifting from NRTs, the work on femtech expansion in India is primarily driven by my interest in examining how digital technologies and artificial intelligence in healthcare shape women’s relationship with their bodies and mediate experiences of embodiment, reproduction, and care.

What prompted you to research the area of your article, “Femtech apps and quantification of the reproductive body in India: Issues and concerns”?

P. Mishra: Two prominent reasons prompted this research. Firstly, there is a recent large-scale adoption of digital technologies as a health trend, and India is no exception. The use of wearable devices and health apps to monitor well-being is rapidly increasing in India. Secondly, given India’s broader transition towards digital governance in all spheres of life, it became imperative to explore how this shift in healthcare is reshaping citizens' access to public services, healthcare, and welfare. More specifically, these changes made it essential to examine how women are included or excluded from this transformation.

The team that worked on this paper consisted of researchers passionate about gender issues – both as academics and also as activists. My co-authors include the following: Ravinder Kaur who is now Professor Emeritus at IIT Delhi and someone who has been researching gender issues for over four decades now in relation to questions of education, work and family and is committed to bridging the gender gap in research and policy. Shambhawi Vikram and Prashastika Sharma joined us as Research Assistants on the project while pursuing their doctoral and MPhil research from JNU Delhi and Ambedkar University Delhi, respectively. They are also actively associated with Pinjra Tod, a feminist collective run by female college students nationwide to fight for a just, accessible, non-discriminatory university space.

What do you see as the key findings of your article?

P. Mishra: The key argument that this article makes is that although femtech was imagined to be an emancipatory and empowering technology for women, offering them control over their sexual and reproductive health, it is far from realising this objective in its current form. While quantification of reproductive health indicators may seem like enhancing awareness and control through self-management, this empowerment is precarious as it is based on the neoliberal wellness paradigms that place the burden of reproductive health on individuals. By reinforcing aspects of normative femininity into femtech design and innovation and by reproducing narrowly defined standards of health and fertility while constantly exercising intimate surveillance, femtech disenfranchises its users by compromising their bodily autonomy and dignity. Femtech in its current form reproduces and furthers patriarchal exploitation and commercialisation of women’s bodies, and as such, is entirely at odds with feminist technoscience’s vision of minimizing women’s oppression.

What are the wider social implications of your research in the current social climate?

P. Mishra: My work demonstrates how digital health technologies are not neutral interventions but intensify existing structural inequalities. Given how India as a country is marred by inequalities of class, caste, digital literacy and access, hopefully my work can inform rethinking design and accessibility standards to be inclusive of marginalised users. Additionally, digital personal data protection remains a contentious issue in India with the law evolving gradually and this research may inform the debates on consent and data ownership. Finally, it can push stakeholders like startups, femtech entrepreneurs, policymakers to prioritise ethical, transparent use of intimate health data.

Do you have any links to images, documents or other pieces of research which build on or add to the article? Or a suggested reading list?

P. Mishra: Another paper that came out as a book chapter focusing specifically on the question of exclusion by design can be found here: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-99-5605-0_5.

Further, an article discussing my views on menstrual technologies can be accessed here: https://www.medianama.com/2025/03/223-are-period-tracking-apps-safe-experts-raise-data-privacy-concerns/.