FemTech

Abstract

This research paper grapples with the oppressive consequences and liberatory possibilities of innovations in menstruation technologies enabled by the Fem- Tech industry. First, it discusses a feminist technoscience framework, tracing some progressions of feminist thought on technology. Then, it reviews popular discourse about FemTech and problematizes some of its implicit assumptions. Using FemTech as a starting point, the paper looks backward in time to some recent histories of menstrual technologies. Finally, it draws on Ursula Franklin’s 1985 discussion about the dichotomy of values that underlie that technological order and those that underlie the women’s world, wondering whether FemTech can serve as a bridge between them. In all, this paper explores how the “femi- nist” label is implicitly and explicitly tied up with FemTech and imagines what truly feminist menstrual technologies could accomplish.