Un-tracking menopause: How not using self-tracking technologies mediates women's self-experiences in menopause

Abstract

Self-tracking in general, and by women in particular is increasingly researched. In the literature, however, women's interactions with selftracking technologies in menopause-a change that (almost) every woman will go through-is largely taken for granted. This paper addresses this lacuna by asking whether and how menopausal women use self-tracking technologies, and how this (non-) usage mediates their self-experiences. In doing so, it elaborates on another understudied phenomenon: the constitutive significance of "un-tracking"-that is, of various shades and levels of not using self-tracking technologies-in menopause. Most of the 13 interviewed women in this study reported that they stopped, drastically reduced, or resisted self-tracking in menopause. By framing the discussion of these accounts of "un-tracking" within the tradition of post-phenomenology and a phenomenology of situated bodily self-awareness, we show that these women experience their bodies as (1) wise and eu-appearing, (2) unmoldable and dysappearing, and (3) longing for disappearance. Herein, their experientially mediating un-tracking practices are temporally and socio-culturally contextualized in complex ways and bear substantial existential significance. This study establishes the potential harmful ways in which self-tracking mediates self-experiences, as well as the fruitful ways in which un-tracking may do so. Against the background of this observation, this paper makes an appeal to take a step back from uncritically celebrating self-tracking in healthcare contexts, and critically evaluates whether (the promotion of) using (more) self-tracking technologies in these contexts is desirable to begin with.

Keywords: gender and health; phenomenological approaches; technology in healthcare.