Medicalization, biomedicalization and gender. Contributions from pharmaceutical markets studies to a debate on premenstrual dysphoric disorder and erectile dysfunction

Abstract

This article aims to recover and systematize theoretical contributions from studies on medicalization and biomedicalization, integrating the analysis of pharmaceutical markets from a gender perspective. Based on a literature review of specific fields, two gender-related diagnoses are analyzed: Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), linked to menstruation in women, and Erectile Dysfunction (ED), associated with sexual performance in men. This paper explains how, in both cases, pharmaceuticals and marketing strategies actively participate in shaping diagnoses, therapies, and social understandings of the body, health, sexuality, and normality. For PMDD, it examines the shift from hormonal explanations to psychopharmacological approaches, as well as the impact of pharmaceutical marketing on the nosological definition and production of medicalized female identities. For ED, it analyzes the conceptual shift from impotence to erectile dysfunction and the introduction of sildenafil as a milestone in the biomedicalization of male sexuality. The results allow identifying how these processes reinforce stereotypes and essentializations of the feminine and the masculine, while reconfiguring notions of performance, aging, and individual responsibility in body management, providing analytical tools to think about other contemporary diagnoses.