We warmly invite you to join us for this joint LSTS Doctoral Seminar and LSTS Gender, Law & Technology (GLT) Session on Monday, 7 September 2026. We look forward to welcoming Klaudia Kwiatkowska, LSTS Visiting Researcher, who will present her research on the gendered dimensions of data governance in femtech. The seminar is titled:
A Legal Perspective on the (Mis)use of Data on Femtech Apps and Devices: Looking Beyond the General Data Protection Regulation
đź“… EVENT DETAILS
- đź“… Date: Monday, 7 September 2026
- đź•’ Time: 15:00 - 16:00 CET
- đź“Ť Location: Room C2.07a and online via Teams
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đź“ť ABSTRACT
Femtech, digital health technologies designed for women’s health, particularly menstrual, sexual, and reproductive health, has the potential to contribute to addressing the persistent gender data gap in health. The historical exclusion of women and other marginalised groups from clinical trials has resulted in significant gaps in health data, contributing to unequal health outcomes and leaving gender-sensitive medicine under-researched and underfunded. By enabling users to track and generate data about their health, femtech technologies are often presented as one way of helping to address these gaps.
The presentation will move beyond the well-documented concerns surrounding the data protection practices of femtech providers and examine how femtech user data may be further processed for scientific research purposes, from the perspectives of the GDPR and the European Health Data Space (EHDS). It will consider whether the current EU health data governance framework can meaningfully address the gender data gap, and what role femtech and femtech-generated data may play in this process.
At the same time, the presentation will question whether simply increasing the availability and re-use of health data, including femtech data, is sufficient to address bias and discrimination in healthcare. Drawing on critical approaches such as data feminism and epistemic injustice, it will explore how existing power structures and inequalities in knowledge production shape the governance and use of health data.
Given the focus on femtech, gender, and data governance, I thought this topic would be  relevant to bring together our LSTS Doctoral Seminar and LSTS GLT communities for a joint session.