Body agency is a power returned after an incident took it away from the user's physical form, and some wearable devices and technologies have this exact goal in mind.
Economists from King's College London (KCL) and Stanford University in America looked at parents' participation in the workforce in the US between 2023 and 2025, including the proportion who worked from home at least one day per week. They analysed the impact of this compared with those who did not work remotely.
For more than 60 years, contraception has been almost exclusively a women's responsibility. Today, women have more than 14 modern contraceptive options, while men have just two: condoms and vasectomies. That imbalance has pushed women to shoulder physical side effects, financial burden, medical risks, and the career impact of family planning-costs that have been accepted as the "status quo" for far too long.
Natural Cycles, the company behind a controversial FDA-cleared birth control app, is replacing its thermometer with a wristband that measures skin temperature, heart rate, and movement during sleep. The newly-launched wristband costs $129.99 and syncs with the Natural Cycles app, which uses an algorithm to determine a person's "daily fertility status." Users can already track their fertility by pairing an Apple Watch or Oura Ring with Natural Cycles, but the wristband could be an option for users who don't have either of these devices handy.
Petal is a bra insert that uses bio-impedance sensors and electrical measurements to monitor blood flow near the heart. Because wearers position the insert right next to the heart, the device can capture more accurate readings than your typical smartwatch, Petal says. The device comes in one size and fits snug against each breast. It's made with biocompatible materials, including a soft European fabric and a polyurethane-coated interior.
The FlowPad looks like your run-of-the-mill menstrual pad but is built with a microfluidic diagnostic layer underneath that directs menstrual blood into biomarker zones for testing fertility, ovarian health, and perimenopausal hormones. The results of the test show up in Vivoo's app after a user scans the pad's results through their phone camera or enters them manually. The ethos behind FlowPad and Vivoo's smart toilet is simple.
By attaching near the ear, the device targets the auricular branches of the trigeminal and vagus nerves to regulate menstrual cycle symptoms and help the body return to a rested state. These nerves play an important role throughout the menstrual cycle and release estrogen and progesterone, two essential sex hormones. They also target muscle contraction, blood flow, digestion, and more, a few body functions that change during a period, which explains the increase in cramps and tightening of blood vessels.
Hysteria was long attributed to a wandering uterus. The earliest text blaming women's reproduction for illness was the Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus, an Egyptian medical scroll from 1900 BC. Women's wombs were blamed for things like choking, cognitive deficits and the inability to speak, and paralysis. Treatments for women were always nonsurgical: swallowing medicine or rubbing it on the body; fumigating the womb with oils or incense.
Let's talk about something nobody warned us about: watching our mothers navigate their sixties with medicine cabinets that look like small pharmacies. Mine started complaining about joint pain last year, then fatigue, then that her doctor kept mentioning bone density. Every visit seemed to add another supplement to her routine, but half the time she wasn't sure if they were actually helping or just expensive placebos.