Feminist Review Issue 72: Drugs – Feminist Review

This issue of??Feminist Review??is concerned with drugs. Non-recreational drugs have a huge impact on women’s lives, which tend to be more medicalized than men’s, so that normal biological processes have come to be treated as medical problems requiring intervention or control. Emily Banks?? account of the origins and contemporary use of hormonal therapy for the menopause, and Jane-Marie Maher’s analysis of visual images of the foetus provide two fine examples of this phenomenon. Karen Throsby’s article on the experiences of women undertaking in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment considers the personal and psychological aspects of medical treatments.

Women are prescribed far more medicines than men. The commonest prescription drugs in the world are hormonal medications, prescribed worldwide for population control, and in the West for management of the menopause. It is ironic, then, to discover that drug trials are most frequently conducted on male subjects, with women specifically excluded.