Exploring Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines from a Gender Approach.

Abstract

The system of intellectual property rights such as patents is designed to support the commercialization and marketing of innovations, business activities, and associated rights. When this system is allowed to operate unchecked with limited or no regulation, it affects and violates human rights. These violations have a far more severe effect on women because of the systemic discrimination and biases entrenched in the functioning of big pharma and other profiteering corporations all chasing the bottom line. Additionally, the effects of these centralised neo-liberal efforts interact with the systematic and structural limitations faced by women in everyday life to enhance the constraints on women’s access to healthcare and health rights (see also Sen and Ostlin, 2007).