Gendered Drugs and Medicine

Teresa Ortiz-Gómez (MD, PhD in History of Medicine) is professor of History of Science at the University of Granada, Spain. She has published widely on gender and the history of medicine, the history of health professions, women in medicine and the history of midwives in Spain. She is currently working on the history of contraception and sexuality in Spain during Francoism and the Spanish transition to democracy. María Jesús Santesmases (PhD in chemistry, historian of science) is a research fellow at the Departamento de Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad, Instituto de Filosofía, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, CSIC in Madrid, Spain. She studies the post-WWII history of experimental biology and medicine, and is currently working on the early practices of human cytogenetics and on the history of antibiotics in Spain.

Drugs are considered to be healers and harmers, wonder substances and knowledge makers; objects that impact on social hierarchies, health practices and public policies. This book focuses on the ways that gender, race/ethnicity and class, influence the design, standardisation and circulation of drugs throughout several highly medicalised countries. Seventeen authors from eight different countries, both European and non-European, analyse the extent to which the dominant ideas and values surrounding masculinity and femininity shape the research, prescription and use of drugs by women and/or men within particular social and cultural contexts.

Part 1 Gender and Women in Pharmaceutical Research, Consumption and Industry; Chapter 1 Oestrogens and Butter Yellow: Gendered Policies of Contamination in Germany, 1930-1970, HeikoStoff; Chapter 2 Rising from Failure, Marta I. GonzálezGarcía; Chapter 3 Gender in Research and Industry: Women in Antibiotic Factories in 1950s Spain, María JesúsSantesmases; Part 2 Contraceptives for Women: Between Users and Prescribers; Chapter 4 Spermicides and their Female Users After World War II: North and South, IlanaLöwy; Chapter 5 Managing Medication and Producing Patients: Imagining Women's Use of Contraceptive Pill Compliance Dispensers in 1960s America, CarrieEisert; Chapter 6 Doctors, Women and the Circulation of Knowledge of Oral Contraceptives in Spain, 1960s-1970s, AgataIgnaciuk,, TeresaOrtiz-Gómez,, EstebanRodríguez-Ocaña; Chapter 7 The Contraceptive Pill, the Pharmaceutical Industry and Changes in the Patient-Doctor Relationship in West Germany, UlrikeThoms; Part 3 Users and Abusers Then and Now: Discourses and Practices; Chapter 8 Women, Men, and the Morphine Problem, 1870-1955, Jesper VaczyKragh; Chapter 9 'A gendered vice'? Gender Issues and Drug Abuse in France, 1960s-1990s, AlexandreMarchant; Chapter 10 , NuriaRomo-Avilés,, CarmenMeneses-Falcón,, EugeniaGil-García;