'State-Corporate Facilitated Harms of the Pharmaceutical Industry: A Gendered Perspective'

The pharmaceutical industry has long been recognised by criminologists as causing social harms towards individuals and groups, by engaging in unethical and illegal business practices in the pathological pursuit of profit (Braithwaite, 1984/2014; Bakan, 2004). This article argues that the neoliberal state is complicit and contributes to pharmaceutical harms due to its reluctance to effectively prohibit and sanction these (Tombs and Whyte, 2015). Neoliberal national healthcare politics and policies have also created rationale and opportunities for private profit creation by the pharmaceutical industry, and resultant social harms (Harvey, 2005; Dorling, 2014). Using a zemiological approach, this article specifically examines why women as healthcare recipients are disproportionately affected by pharmaceutical harms (Szockyi and Fox, 1996). It argues that women who experience social harms caused by the pharmaceutical industry are perceived primarily in relation to their reproductive and sexualised bodies, resulting in devaluation of their health and obscuring of state-corporate harms caused.