In Germany, there are about as many women doctors as there are doctors, in pharmacies – depending on the statistics – even 80 to 90 percent of the employees are women. The sentence that can be read or heard in almost every advertisement for medicines has little to do with reality: “Read the package leaflet about risks and side effects and ask your doctor or pharmacist.” It is possible that it will soon be reformulated in a new and gender-neutral way. At least one such initiative has now found a prominent advocate: Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach. “I would be very much in favor of women being specifically named. It reflects the reality of care,” says the SPD politician picture-Newspaper.
This was initiated by various professional associations: In its previous form, the sentence “no longer fits in with the times,” says the President of the German Medical Association, Klaus Reinhardt. And the President of the Federal Union of German Associations of Pharmacists (ABDA), Gabriele Regina Overwiening, criticizes the high proportion of women in pharmacies: “A purely male use of language can by no means be regarded as fair language practice.”
The only problem is that the manufacturers of medicines have to name the sentence in their advertising, and in this way and no other way. That’s in Paragraph 4 of the Medicines Advertising Act – for any advertising for medicines “outside the professional circles”. It is not only the wording that is required by law, but also, for example, that the sentence must be “clearly separated from the other advertising statements, delimited and legible” and must also be read out on television.
The then Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Renate Schmidt (SPD), tried to reformulate it in 2005 – without success. She wanted the wording: “Get medical advice and ask your pharmacist”. Because there was too much fuss, the red-green government rowed back at the time. Since April 2021, the Bundestag has also had a petition for a gender-sensitive reformulation, for example with “doctors and pharmacists”. With just 51 signatories, however, it has not yet had any real political impact. This should now change after the initiative of the professional associations.
The question is, of course, how exactly the sentence could be reformulated. “The mandatory text should be replaced by a neutral yet easily understandable wording,” demands Reinhardt, President of the Medical Association. The President of the German Medical Association, Christiane Groß, advocates depersonalizing it: “Ask your doctor’s office or pharmacy.” ABDA boss Overwiening, on the other hand, calls for a wording in the law that allows for several variants: “Ask your doctor or pharmacist”, “Ask your doctor or pharmacist” or “Ask your doctor or pharmacist”.
The pharmaceutical companies, on the other hand, may also find it important that the sentence is not too long: it also has to be spoken in TV commercials; the longer it is, the more time it takes and the more expensive it is to broadcast. That is the reason why this sentence is not only one of the most frequently heard on German television, but – which is not statistically verifiable – basically the fastest spoken. Incidentally, it was also the pharmaceutical lobby at whose instigation the sentence was included in the law in 1990: it succeeded in preventing an advertising ban for medicines.