This paper explores how digitally mediated female spirituality in contemporary Italy operates as an alternative infrastructure of care in contexts marked by reproductive health inequalities. Drawing on digital ethnography and discursive interviews with eight practitioners offering spiritual guidance primarily online, the study examines how ritual practices intentionally designed for digital environments respond to perceived gaps in biomedical and institutional healthcare.
In a context where reproductive health remains shaped by territorial and economic disparities, limited access to integrative services, and epistemic marginalization of embodied female knowledge, these practitioners construct what ritual theory describes as "online rituals": structured pathways combining spiritual, educational, and therapeutic dimensions, delivered through newsletters, video consultations, symbolic altar practices, and curated digital content.
The paper situates these practices within scholarship on digital religion and ritual theory, engaging with the distinction between rituals online and online rituals, and with sociological perspectives on cultural authority and "experts of needs." It argues that digitally mediated spiritual care does not merely adapt pre-existing religious forms to technological platforms, but actively reshapes notions of care, authority, and community through platform economies. Digital mediation simultaneously expands access — potentially mitigating territorial and institutional barriers to reproductive healthcare — and generates new forms of inequality linked to digital literacy, algorithmic visibility, and symbolic capital accumulation.
By examining female spirituality as both a response to and a reconfiguration of reproductive health inequalities, the paper contributes to broader debates on digital religion and (in)equality, highlighting the ambivalent role of digital infrastructures as enabling and stratifying spaces in contemporary spiritual life.