ABSTRACT
This article critically analyzes the emergence of Femtech in urban India, examining how data extraction on reproductive data interplays with privacy and rights. Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Delhi and Mumbai from late 2023 to 2024, and 85 interviews with users, developers, and healthcare providers of Femtech, this research examines three case studies: the Aadhaar-linked Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS), menstrual health apps, and PCOS websites. Based on feminist technoscience and India's privacy law tradition, specifically the Puttaswamy judgment, the study unfolds the ways in which data-driven care models scale up reproductive surveillance and differentially marginalize poor, caste-subordinate, and gender-nonconforming populations. The major findings are algorithmic exclusion in health recommendations, commodification of intimate data through state-corporate alliances, and attenuated bodily autonomy in legislation such as the PCPNDT Act. The research contends that Femtech, instead of promoting empowerment, mostly is compatible with surveillance capitalism, reinforcing existing power disparities. It ends by promoting inclusive and rights-centric data governance that takes privacy, dignity, and equitable access to digital healthcare as its priority.
