Digitising female fertility and reproduction

Over the past few months, I have been working on writing about the findings of several research projects addressing the topic of digital technologies directed at female fertility and reproduction. These projects involve:

1) a critical content analysis of fertility and reproduction-related software and devices (especially apps);

2) an online survey of 410 Australian women’s use of pregnancy and parenting apps; and

3) focus groups and interviews with Australian and British women about their use of these technologies (these are still in progress).

Several outcomes have now been published drawing on these findings. They include a report (with Sarah Pedersen from Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen) outlining the findings of the online survey (this can be accessed here), an article on the gamification and ludification of pregnancy in apps (with Gareth Thomas from Cardiff University, available here) and a book chapter on the concept of the reproductive citizen and the range of digital technologies that are directed at helping women to monitor and regulate their fertility and reproduction (available here). Edit: two other articles have now been published: one based on the survey findings (here), and another on the pregnancy app study (here).

Some of the key findings are:

• The survey showed that pregnancy and parenting apps were very popular among the survey respondents – three-quarters of the respondents (who were either pregnant or who had a baby in the past three years at the time of the survey) said that they had used at least one pregnancy app, while almost half had used at least one parenting app.
• Googling information about pregnancy is very common among pregnant women, for whom too much information about pregnancy appears never to be enough (this finding emerged in the focus groups). They tend to invest their trust in the first few search findings that come up on their search engine, reasoning that because this is evidence of popularity, then these websites must be credible.
• Despite the popularity of pregnancy and parenting apps, few women are contemplating the validity of the information presented in them, or demonstrated concern about the data security and privacy of the personal information that the apps may collect (this was evident in both the survey and the focus groups).
• This genre of software is intensifying an already fervid atmosphere of self-surveillance, attempts at management and control and self-responsibility in which female fertility and reproduction are experienced and performed.
• Stereotypical concepts of idealised female fertile and pregnant bodies are reproduced in apps and other software. They use highly aestheticised images and the promise of rational calculation and monitoring to seek to contain and control women’s fertility and reproduction.
• Women in their fertile years – and particularly those contemplating pregnancy or already pregnant – are part of a highly commodified demographic. The information that they generate from their online practices possess a new form of value, biovalue, as part of the bioeconomy of personal health and medical data.