Know yourself (through data): Menstruation, Data Flows, and Immaterial Labour

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Period tracking applications are at the centre of data accumulation practices and at the heart of data-driven medical scientific knowledge production. I want to research the relationships between technology producers and users by using aframing of data production as labour to analyse how period tracking applications situate themselves as sites ofknowledge over women's bodies and reproduction through discourses of data-driven objectivity. I study how women inGermany and Egypt use these applications and how this changes how they understand themselves and their bodies. Ipreliminarily identified two applications produced in the Global North: Clue and Glow. I employ a mix of methods: anethnographic approach and the walkthrough method, to study how young women under 35 in Cairo and Berlin use thesetwo period tracking applications. My research fills an important gap in the literature on self-tracking which is focused onthe Global North and English-speaking countries and brings women's voices to the global conversation about datamarkets and the current moment of data-driven knowledge production. I ask do women using the applications navigatethis space of commodified data in which the time and effort spent inputting data is rendered invisible and the value of thislabour merely trickles down to them? Do period trackers, advertised as neutral, objective, data-driven sources ofknowledge over women's bodies, help women to gain control or knowledge over their bodies?