Now, more than ever, society lacks privacy. If I search online for a condom brand, that brand will show up on my Facebook feed as a detailed advertisement. Due to this invasive algorithm, I might even get advertisements for nearby obstetrics and gynecologists. Data mining has become a huge tool in marketing specific brand items to individual users.

But this mining doesn’t just get turned into harmless Facebook ads. It also applies to larger institutions, such as workplaces. These companies track what you eat, where you shop and even whom you vote for in order to monitor and make decisions about your health.

Christina Limpert-Leclercq, a women and gender studies professor at Syracuse University, said this invasion of privacy could allow companies to classify employees with certain health conditions and make predictive suggestions to help manage their health care.

“I’m always skeptical when a for-profit company like Castlight Health Inc. claims to benefit anyone but its stockholders,” Limpert-Leclercq said. “From what I can tell, businesses hire data mining companies like Castlight Health Inc. to direct and shape employee decisions about health care, including reproductive health.”

She added that employees are encouraged to sign up for the Castlight app, which tracks and analyzes individual searches in order to use data to shape health care recommendations to individual employees.

This is incredibly beneficial to businesses that would rather fire their women work force than give them maternity leave. These companies fear having to give maternity leave, so to prevent losses, they will fire a female employee before she conceives.

Limpert-Leclercq said these private sector companies are more interested in accumulating clients and a making a profit for the shareholders than in women’s health.

“Members of Castlight’s executive staff have close ties to big pharmacies and this should raise a red flag,” she said. “Data mining companies claim to want to ‘empower people to make better choices,’ but Castlight limits their in-house network of providers and services, so the notion of individual choice becomes a ruse.”

In comparison with other advanced economies, the United States does not mandate paid maternity leave at the federal level for new mothers. New mothers are given zero weeks of paid leave and 12 weeks of protected leave. This means women are guaranteed a job so long as she comes back by three months leave.

Contrast this to Estonia, which allows 108 weeks of paid leave and 180 weeks of protected leave. Meanwhile, Sweden offers 56 weeks paid at 80 percent of citizens’ salary and 13 additional weeks paid at a fixed rate.

The unfair maternity system in the workforce speaks on a larger scale of female reproduction. Much of society still sees women as mere machines for reproduction. When society diminishes a woman of her humanity, procedures are created to continue this dehumanization.

Limpert-Leclercq said part of reproductive justice is understanding how systems like the health care industry use policies to control and oppress marginalized groups.

Corporate organizations should not fire their workers based off profitability. It’s unethical and reinforces many ideals — such as a woman’s place is not in the workforce.

“In a perfect world, health care wouldn’t be tied to profit,” Limpert-Leclercq said. “The topic of birth control and pregnancy in the workplace is one of many front lines in the battle for reproductive justice and the right for cis and transwomen, and their families, to have equitable access to and control over reproductive policies and health care.”

The United States needs to better protect women’s reproductive rights. Stop this invasive method of figuring out a woman’s fertility as it only harms our ladies and is really nobody else’s business other than her own.

Isabella Ong is a sophomore television, radio and film major. Her column appears weekly in Pulp. She can be reached at iong01@syr.edu.

Published on February 24, 2016 at 8:42 pm