Women’s Health and Corporate Marketing: Our Bodies, Their Business

This compelling collection of essays examines how historically significant marketing schemes have profoundly impacted women’s health and healthcare across the world.

Written by scholars and activists from a range of disciplines, including law, sociology, and the health sciences, the book spotlights a range of products that have had a damaging impact on women’s health, laying bare the values and assumptions engrained within the marketing campaigns that promoted them. Examples include the advertisement of household and personal care products that expose users to toxic chemicals, empowerment messaging to persuade women to use tobacco products in low- and middle-income countries, and the deceptive marketing of benzodiazepines and opioids that disproportionately impacts women and their families.

A powerful critique of the unethical and paternalistic approach of some corporations, this book will find readers among students taking courses in Public Health, Allied Health, Gender Studies, Sociology, and beyond, as well as interested professionals and lay readers.

Mary Hunter is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California San Francisco School of Nursing. Her current research focuses on the prescription of potentially inappropriate medications associated with cognitive decline in women, including estrogen, benzodiazepines, and opioids. As a nurse practitioner who has dealt with problems related to addiction both in and out of a clinical environment, she understands that drug dependence is everywhere, and finding appropriate treatment for victims is problematic.