ABSTRACT
The chapter investigates the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) from a gender perspective to question whether the Regulation does/ should explicitly recognise gender and, if so, how. It makes three distinct contributions: First, it argues that gender matters within the GDPR. Using femtech as a case study at the intersection of data protection and reproductive and sexual rights, we show that technology-facilitated gendered surveillance is inextricably linked with the sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls (or the lack thereof).
Second, the chapter argues that gendered risks should be encompassed by the GDPR’s risk-based approach. In this regard, we articulate a conceptualisation of gendered risks for the first time in the data protection scholarship and identify types of gendered risks that are not currently captured by the GDPR’s narrow focus on individual risks: these include embodied, collective and societal gendered risks.
Third, the chapter argues that the GDPR should be made gender responsive by explicitly acknowledging gendered risks.
Tzanou, Maria and Siapka, Anastasia, Re-imagining Data Protection: Femtech and Gendered Risks in the GDPR (April 30, 2024) in Costello and Leiser (eds), Critical Reflections on the EU’s Data Protection Regime: GDPR in the Machine, https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/critical-reflections-on-the-eus-data-protection-regime-9781509977840/.
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