Hormonal Advantage: Retracing Exploitative Histories of Workplace Menstrual Tracking

Technologies and self-help protocols associated with menstrual tracking have gained popularity over the past decade, with wellness consultants such as Alisa Vitti at the helm. Through careful monitoring and lifestyle changes, such techniques promise to unleash an inherent hormonal advantage that can extend one’s personal and professional pursuits. Though seemingly new, these approaches to menstrual monitoring have an historical lineage born of corporate management. Now being sold as feminist, they draw on a belief in menstrual deficit, or an understanding of menstruation along productivist lines focused on curbing workplace absenteeism and enhancing personal optimization. In bringing together cases from over the last century, this paper seeks to establish a through line of economization and imagine instead how workplace tracking might be leveraged toward worker mobilization and bargaining for collective gains.