Viagra was designed strictly for men. Then researchers learned that Sexual dysfunction is an even bigger problem for women, and the race to Create a female tonic was on. Steve Fishman charts the progress. Photographed by Frederik Lieberath

One day, Maria thought, To hell with it, excuse the language. There had been fights with her husband, whom she adored, but just now she was occupied. The accounting job, and she had a young child. And the new house. It had lovely elm trees in the yards, front and back. The place looked beautiful.

"How about me?" her husband would ask. "What's the point?" she would answer him offhandedly. Maria had reddish-brown hair, a sunset shade, and dreamy eyes-that's how she thinks of them. She touched her hair as she said, "I don't think about sex."

Really, though, she did. She might not want sex, but how could she avoid the thought? On TV, in the movies, there were always women having sex, and looking as if they loved it-though she'd decided those scenes must be unrealistic, since she'd never experienced anything remotely like it.

Maria is 36 and exercises two or three times a week, She has strong, beautiful legs, which her husband says are her best feature, though he likes her smile, too. It shows her bright teeth, though not too much, and makes her cheeks plump a little. Smiling, she'd look in the mirror, and think, I don't look like I've aged a bit since 25. In fact, she'd add, I feel better now about myself than I did when I was 25. So why hadn't her sex life blossomed with everything else?

She'd consulted half a dozen gynecologists. She'd been to counseling. She'd bought books and pornographic movies. She'd masturbated, or tried to. She'd blamed her husband, wondering, at separate times, about his technique and her emotions. Maybe she wasn't wildly in love any longer. "I was on a search" , she confessed, without smiling.

A slice of the medical community has recently signed on to that same search for the female orgasm. Since Viagra, Pfizer's billion-dollar-a-year pill, rebooted the sex lives of men two years ago, drug companies seem to be waking up and saying, "What about women?" Last February, researchers at the University of Chicago publicized survey data showing that sexual dysfunction-the inability to have an orgasm or enjoy sex-is a bigger problem for women than for men. Forty-three percent of women ages 18 to 59 experience some trouble, while only 31 percent of men do. Before that, there was almost no work being done on women. Now, it's a big race. The pace of research has accelerated to the point where it looks entirely possible that women will have their own tested version-or versions-of Viagra in the works within the next couple of years. Already, new findings in many laboratories show that Viagra-or at least its main ingredient, sildenafil-does work for women (despite some reports to the contrary last year). Many other sex-enhancing substances designed for men appear likely to work for women too.

The promise of these hectic new efforts isn't only for those, like Maria, who have never had an orgasm. Ultimately, the promise is that any woman who wants an improved sex life might soon be able to take a pill or apply a cream.

"Something women could take," says one impatient doctor in New York, who's already had a pharmacist mix up a couple of what he hopes are orgasm-promoting concoctions, "whenever they want to have sex."