IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v63y2006i8p1986-1997.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gendering the migraine market: Do representations of illness matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Kempner, Joanna

Abstract

Migraine is a common, debilitating and costly disorder. Yet help-seeking for and rates of diagnosis of migraine are low. Drawing on ethnographic observations of pharmaceutical marketing practices at professional headache conferences and a content analysis of migraine advertising, principally in the USA, this paper demonstrates: (1) that the pharmaceutical industry directs its marketing of migraine medication to women; and (2) as part of this strategy, pharmaceutical advertisements portray women as the prototypical migraine sufferer, through representations that elicit hegemonic femininity. This strategy creates the impression that migraine is a "women's disorder", which, in turn, exacerbates gender bias in help seeking and diagnosis of migraine and reifies presumptions about the epidemiology of the disorder. I conclude that these pharmaceutical marketing practices have a paradoxical effect: even as they educate and raise awareness about migraine, they also create barriers to help seeking and diagnosis.

Suggested Citation

  • Kempner, Joanna, 2006. "Gendering the migraine market: Do representations of illness matter?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(8), pages 1986-1997, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:63:y:2006:i:8:p:1986-1997
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(06)00254-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Metzl, Jonathan M. & Angel, Joni, 2004. "Assessing the impact of SSRI antidepressants on popular notions of women's depressive illness," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 577-584, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gross, Christiane & Schübel, Thomas & Hoffmann, Rasmus, 2015. "Picking up the pieces—Applying the DISEASE FILTER to health data," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(4), pages 549-557.
    2. Fisher, Jill A. & Cottingham, Marci D. & Kalbaugh, Corey A., 2015. "Peering into the pharmaceutical “pipeline”: Investigational drugs, clinical trials, and industry priorities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 322-330.
    3. Bila, Blandine & Egrot, Marc, 2009. "Gender asymmetry in healthcare-facility attendance of people living with HIV/AIDS in Burkina Faso," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(6), pages 854-861, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.

      Corrections

      All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:63:y:2006:i:8:p:1986-1997. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

      If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

      If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

      If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

      For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

      Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

      IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.