Have you ever looked on the shelves in a drug store and noticed that only mothers take care of children? Notice that only men get back pain? It seems that if the product has some form of advertising, then that advertising will most likely tell you which gender this particular product really is intended for. Using the cultural and societal norms of the US as reasoning, major drug suppliers today continue the gendered vision of a mother as healer to her children. By looking at packaging, and its blatant use in at least half of the major brands of a female assisting children, modern companies are continuing an age-old notion that only women take of children. Inherently though, do women have any more knowledge about Tylenol“ than a man? I propose that both sexes are equally adept at using drugs that should be equally effective on both sexes on children! Yet, by looking at a local Wal-Mart “ store you see the annoying persistence of marketers to place the social stereotype of health care on women. This is especially rampant in children’s medicine, but also in other forms of care. Men for example, are apparently the only ones who experience back pain, if a graphic of a person is given. So then it must be true that only men get back pain from working long days and only women know how to hold their children while they take some suspension. How much of our common knowledge and culture is shaped by the way technologies are assigned a gender? In what way does this assigning make a product more marketable or more attractive? Which of the products shown in this display would you purchase? As a mother, are you automatically a Dr. Mom or do you have to earn that title by buying products? Do you know a man who goes by Dr. Dad, and more importantly, does Dr. Dad have a degree in pediatric medicine? Automatically who would you trust more, Dr. Mom or Dr. Dad?

Suggested Readings:
Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. “The Industrial Revolution in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th century.” Sex/Machine. Ed. Patrick Hopkins. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998.33.

Mahowald, Mary Briody. Women and Children in Health Care. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Wajcman, Judy. Feminism Confronts Technology. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.