yeah fairly sexist, totally unnecessary.
surely an
“IF YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF MEDICATIONS FOR YOUR HOUSEHOLD PLEASE X, Y AND Z”
would have been better.
Sexist, and unnecessary. What the hell is the point in singling out women? Just say “the person who”.
So who’s gonna e-mail this page to Walgreen’s? 
Splanky, it actually implies that women are MORE responsible then men, since it singles them out as the ones usually responsible for managing the family’s medicinal usages. (Kudos for slipping in a quote from Things Fall Apart in a thread about prescription drugs, definitely the obscure reference of the day.)
It might be sexist, but it’s harmlessly sexist. As a man, I’m not really bothered by the implication that women are better with details like the effects of various prescription medicine. My mother is very detail-oriented, she took care of all that stuff while I was growing up. Myself and my father are daydreamers who tend to forget the details of life unless we make a strong conscious effort to attend to them. I was always glad of my mother’s help in those areas. So, for me, this Walgreen’s statement has a kernal of truth, and I could hardly be offended.
No matter how accurate it is referring to your own particular experiences, I still don’t see how it actually harms anybody. Walgreen’s won’t be coming to your house to check on whether you put a woman in charge of your drugs.
It’s only really the first sentance that is the problem, and no-one has yet provided any concrete data on whether it’s true or not.
If it were the case that women did indeed “often take care of medicines for the whole family” then the rest of the advice is fair enough, I would have thought? They do indeed need to read the label etc etc.
The bigger problem is not the claim that women look after more medicine than men, but rather the implication that women are more likely to forget to do the things advised than men are. Even then, that’s an interpretation of what is actually said and it’s not the only way of reading it. I guess the thing to ask is that if men were more in charge of medicines would the subsequent advice have been added regardless (or would it have been assumed that men would remember to do all that stuff on their own).
So, a few questions need answering maybe?
-
Do women tend to look after medicines more than men?
-
Are they more likely to forget to do the things mentioned than men?
Both of those are verifiable questions, and if the answer to each was “yes”, there’s not a problem.
This appears to be part of a campaign by the FDA’s Office of Women’s Health:
http://www.fda.gov/womens/taketimetocare/tttc1999.html
http://www.fda.gov/womens/taketimetocare/Meds_Eng.html
Targetting such a campaign at women makes sense, I think, from a demographics standpoint, but implying (intentionally or uninentionally) that only women need this information is shortsighted. I’d tend to chalk it up to bad writing, rather than overt sexism. Since the brochure itself isn’t online, I’m not sure at what point it got mangled, by the FDA or by Walgreens. The FDA brochure says “Women often take care of medicines for the whole family, as well as themselves. So we need to read the label, avoid problems, ask questions and keep a record.” [emphasis mine]
Eva Luna, could you clarify how you got the information? Was it a pamphlet included with your order? Printed on the instruction sheet that came with your prescription? I’d react slightly differently if the passage in question was in a pamplet that was titled “Precription Medicine: A Guide for Women” with a sort of a by-women, for-women slant, than if it just appeared on a label (presumably intended for general consumption) without that context.
I don’t think anyone disuptes this. Neither would it be wise to suggest that there aren’t any men who take care of their family’s medicines who could benefit from reading the label, keeping records, etc.
I certainly hope you aren’t serious, either about this being likely to be true, or about that being an adequate justification for sexism. Even if women were, on average, more likely to forget, it would remain true that some women are forgetful, and some men are forgetful, and emphasizing one group over the other is not helpful. And it doesn’t change the fact that it would be good for everyone, male, female, forgetful or not, to follow the advice they are offering.
In any event, there’s no mention of women having been found to be more forgetful or less organized in the links above.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Podkayne *
[
Eva Luna, could you clarify how you got the information? Was it a pamphlet included with your order? Printed on the instruction sheet that came with your prescription? I’d react slightly differently if the passage in question was in a pamplet that was titled “Precription Medicine: A Guide for Women” with a sort of a by-women, for-women slant, than if it just appeared on a label (presumably intended for general consumption) without that context.
QUOTE]
Yep; if you’re familiar with how Walgreen’s packages prescriptions (at east in Illinois), it was part of the sheet stapled to the bag that includes info on side effects, uses of the drug, and your co-pay amount. I have since thrown it away, but I seem to recall it quoting that it was from some FDA info.
I still don’t see why they framed this in a non-gender-neutral way, even if some study shows that women manage their families’ meds to a larger extent than men. I imagine there are also plenty of households that either have no women in them, or in which a woman is not in charge of keeping an eye on everyone’s meds (either because a man does, or because everyone manages his/her own). So I don’t see how aiming the pamphlet at women is going to improve matters.
Eva, I suspect it’s just a matter of marketing. They feel that the campaign will have greater effectiveness if they devote their time and money to reaching the demographic that will recieve the greatest benefit from the information. So it doesn’t seem totally unjustified to me for them to try make the pamphlets attractive to women, distribute them to women’s health clinics, etc. It’s not necessarily the way I’d go about it, but I can see how it might be justified from a cost/benefit point of view. Also, consider that the source is the Office of Women’s Health, so there’s a whole political thing there–they have identified a safety issue (managing medicines) that is important to the population they have a mandate to serve, so they went about it in a way that (wisely or not) is focused on that population.
However, if Walgreens is just going to splat the info on every presciption drug info sheet, it’s hard to see that any benefit could be gleaned from making it gender specific. I’m inclined to blame a sloppy cut-n-paste job. Somebody Walgreens pharmacy bigwig got an email from the FDA OWH about this nifty pamphlet, and thought, “Hey, that is keen! We should adapt that for our packaging.” And the task got shuffled off to somebody who did a quick cut-n-paste with a few hasty modifications, ran it past their manager, and then uploaded it to the Main Walgreens Pharmacy Computer, and, bingo, every Walgreens in the country is cranking it out with every 'script for antibiotics, antifungal cream, or Viagra.
Yep, mine was for allergy medicine…is it even possible to overdose on a nasal inhaler?
And about that last comment…is it possible to forget to take Viagra? I can just imagine the scene…“Honey, don’t forget to take your Viagra tonight. You know how important is is to…ummmm…your health that you take it every day, on time, and in the proper dosage.”
There probably is some sociological evidence out there that women are more likely to make family medical decisions, so there is a basis for the pamphlet. That being said, they certainly could have handled this better. Might I suggest:
Two benefits, as I see it. First, everyone gets insulted, so no more sexism. Second, it’s completely true.
Sua (who is nursing a sniffle himself right now. Waah!!)
I do see it as a trifle sexist, but not worth getting upset about. As somebody noted, its source was the Office of Women’s Health (which is of course not sexist in the slightest on the part of our government :rolleyes: ).
If I had noticed the wording at all on a prescription (we use Kerr’s and Eckerd’s, there being no Walgreen’s within a 20 mile radius of us), my reaction would likely have been:
“Well, it’s a ‘heads-up’ to the women who do assume this role in a lot of families – and worth noting if you happen to be a man in the same role; they targeted women because the OWH original did, and because in a significant proportion of households (majority?) it is the woman of the house who undertakes this responsibility in behalf of husband and children.”
Consider the case of a man who is the caregiver-to-children because his wife is a professional woman and because they have agreed that they want one of them to be the caregiver and role model for their small children and their relative potential income indicates that they as a family will be better off with her working full-time and him as primary caregiver. His “job description,” his resource material, most of what’s available to aid in his task is principally written from the perspective of a woman, since in a majority of households she will function in that role, even if she also works. But he quickly learns not to be offended by the putative sexism in that material and to adapt it to his own circumstances.
Point of order, Polycarp - the establishment of the Office of Women’s Health represents a pretty important step away from sexism. For a considerable period of time, drugs and other medical studies were only performed on men, and the results applied to both men and women. Problem was, male and female bodies are different in small but medically significant ways. It took a long battle against the (male-dominated) medical establishment to recognize these differences, start including women in medical trials, etc.
Sua
Their customer comment page is
Yeah, singling out women like that seems really pointless and odd to me.
What if you looked at your car’s owner’s manual and it said something like men often take care of car maintenance for the whole family, as well as themselves. So they need to check the oil, the tire pressure, the windshield washer fluid levels, etc. on all cars their family drives?
Right, that would be sexist against women by presuming they can’t take care of a car, that’s a man’s role. Just like the pamplet in the OP is sexist against men, by presuming they aren’t responsible enough to administer medicines to the family. The number of people in this thread who seem to think the pamplet is sexist against and insulting to women is baffling, when just the opposite is true.
So men being used as guinea pigs instead of women is sexist against women? Perhaps, but it is equally sexist against men, if not more so. Ask yourself this: If ONLY women were used in medical tests, would that be sexist against men, or against women?
I agree with what RexDart just said.
The consensus of this thread seems to be that the wording is sexists and potentially insulting to men but not worth bothering with. But Thudlow Boink’s counter-example brings up a very interesting point. My guess is that if such language were found in a car owner’s manual the reaction would be much, much stronger. Why?
Dart: "The number of people in this thread who seem to think the pamplet is sexist against and insulting to women is baffling, when just the opposite is true.
"
I haven’t bothered to count, Dart, but my sense is that most people in the thread feel the pamphlet is (mildly) insulting to both sexes. Nor does anyone seem to be taking the position that the major problem here is serious sexist insult: more like surprising stupidity of a (thankfully) outmoded kind.
bnorton, I’m not so sure it would provoke a stronger reaction. But I somehow doubt that the language would appear in the car manual. I think that’s b/c our culture has been more successful at dislodging stereotypes about women’s ability to manage “masculine” tasks such as car maintenance than about men’s supposed inability to take on “feminine” tasks involving nurture.
Those in charge of producing the car manual are much more likely to stop and think: “Hey, what about the millions of single women who maintain cars without the help of a man?.” They might even think about the growing number of couples who do don’t divide tasks along predictably gendered lines. But when it comes to issues of nurture–childcare, elder care, even spousal care–a woman’s role seems to have been assumed here without further reflection (despite the fact that anyone might guess that millions of men, for all kinds of reasons, must look after the medicine of their children, their aging relatives, or even a wife and that a majority of able-bodied, mentally competent men are undoubtedly looking after their own medicine.) Still, I find it surprising (and I still hope someone takes advantage of that website and contacts Walgreens).
The typical signs of a heart attack differ between men and women.
The first study of heart disease risk factors in women was mounted in the mid-1980s. Starting with girls between ages of about six and nine or so and recording their diet and activity levels. The oldest of the participants in that study are now in their twenties, and have not hit an age where heart disease is going to be a major concern.
In another decade, the study may wind up with meaningful results.
And the typical signs of a heart attack still differ between men and women.
And nobody knows if the things that contribute to risks do.