It was 85 years ago, on October 18, 1929, that women were finally declared "persons" in Canada thanks to five Alberta women. Emily Murphy, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney, Henrietta Muir Edwards and Nellie Mcclung were able to declare a major victory when they were able to say, quite simply: "We are persons too!"
Since then, women have been making great strides in the push for gender equity. Women now hold senior positions in almost every profession and leadership positions in government and industry. We've had female Premiers and a female Prime Minister.
My daughter can't believe that women weren't allowed in Military College or the Canadian Navy when I joined up 30 years ago. Now women command warships and fly fighter jets, and there is no question that they have breached almost every domain that had once been the sole bastion of men.
But it's premature to say that true gender equity has been achieved. Women still earn less than men, carry the bulk of childcare duties, and are often the first ones to sacrifice their careers when children come along.
More worrisome, however, is to see how demands for justice for both sexes can be construed in ways that co-opt the language of equality to sell ideas or products.
As a pharmaceutical policy researcher, I've been studying the marketing practices of the drug industry for two decades. In that time I have seen many examples where the industry-fuelled medicalization of women's health has threatened to turn the normal ups and downs of puberty, pregnancy and menopause into ripe fodder for pharmaceutical-enhancement.
But there's one significant frontier in the medicalization of women's bodies that remains elusive: drug treatment for female sexuality.
That may be about to change.
At the end of October, the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA) will be sponsoring a workshop called "Patient-Focused Drug Development and Scientific Workshop on Female Sexual Dysfunction," which puts on display two very starkly contrasting views of female sexuality.
On the one hand, led by drug companies wishing to create the first new "Pink Viagra," surrogate patient groups have started actively lobbying for new drug development under the guise of gender equity. These advocates point out that there are already 26 FDA-approved drugs on the market for male sexual problems and "ZERO for women" and so they want the FDA to take action and recognize its apparent gender bias by lowering the standards needed to approve drugs for women.
On the other hand are women health advocates who are vocally countering the medicalization of female sexuality, saying that the FDA should not accept the rewriting of disease definitions simply in order to satisfy the drug industry's desire to market drugs for low sexual desire. They argue that female sexuality is complex and diverse, and based on a whole range of emotional and relationship factors that are not as simple as a male plumbing problem, and hence, not amendable to a pharmaceutical cure.
The problem lies in the fact that no one seems to be able to precisely define 'female sexual dysfunction' and the 'disease' for which a pill might be warranted. Being too tired for sex? Being uninterested in the lout who wears sweatpants around the house? Living with a Neanderthal who doesn't know how to do laundry?
But that lack of a definition hasn't stopped some in the drug industry from trying to characterize low sexual interest as a disease.
In the recent past the world has been witness to intensive efforts to redefine or characterize normal human social and physiologic parameters into conditions that require pharmaceutical treatment. We can now add 'female sexual dysfunction' - deemed abnormal, widespread and urgently in need of pharmaceutical intervention - to the list of a broad range of normal human behaviours including sadness, social anxiety and childhood exuberance.
Let's strip the false 'equality' language from the sales pitch and recognize that this is not about being fair and even between the sexes, but about potential profits.
- Alan Cassels is a pharmaceutical policy researcher and an expert advisor with EvidenceNetwork.ca.
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