Gender policies and advertising and marketing practices that affect women's health.

Background: The three papers of this doctoral thesis are based on the social construction of reality through the analysis of communication relating to health issues. We have analysed the contents of parliamentary, institutional, and mass media to uncover whether their communications create, transmit, and perpetuate gender biases and/or stereotypes, which may have an impact on peoples' health, with a particular focus on women.

Objective: To analyse decision making and the creation of gender awareness policies and actions affecting women's health: (1) political debates about abortion, (2) gender awareness communication campaigns and educational actions, and (3) pharmaceutical advertising strategies.

Quality of pharmaceutical advertising and gender bias in medical journals (1998-2008): a review of the scientific literature.

Objective: To review the scientific literature on pharmaceutical advertising aimed at health professionals in order to determine whether gender bias has decreased and the quality of information in pharmaceutical advertising has improved over time.

Methods: We performed a content analysis of original articles dealing with medical drug promotion (1998-2008), according to quality criteria such as (a) the number, validity and accessibility of bibliographic references provided in pharmaceutical advertising and (b) the extent to which gender representations were consistent with the prevalence of the diseases. Databases: PUBMED, Medline, Scopus, Sociological Abstract, Eric and LILACS.

Abortion in democratic Spain: the parliamentary political agenda 1979-2004.

Since Spain's transition to democracy, abortion has been a public policy issue both inside and outside parliament. This paper describes the history of abortion law reform in Spain from 1979 to 2004 and analyses the discourse on abortion of members of the Spanish parliament by sex and political allegiance. The analysis is based on a retrospective study of the frequency of legislative initiatives and the prevalence of different arguments and positions in debates on abortion found through a systematic search of the parliamentary database.