Stubbing out female smoking
Fewer women smoke than men. Globally, about 9 percent of women smoke compared with 40 percent men. Female smoking rates in Asia remain particularly low, in spite of increases in women’s independence and spending power. However, there is no room for complacency as the number of girls who smoke is increasing in some countries.
Tobacco is deadly for women when used as the manufacturer intends. Tobacco kills more women than any other consumer product on the market.
Two million women die from tobacco use every year, almost threequarters of whom live in low- and middle-income countries.
Women are also affected by men’s smoking. Millions of women suffer, while about 700,000 women die every year from being exposed to someone else’s smoking.
Women who smoke like men, die like men. In addition, women can suffer reproductive health problems such as increased risk of infertility, delays in conceiving, increased risk of cervical cancer and dangers in pregnancy to both the woman and her unborn child.
Cigarette ads promise emancipation, whereas in reality, smoking is yet another form of bondage for women.
Girls and women have been exploited and aggressively recruited by the tobacco companies’ richly funded marketing campaigns for traditional cigarettes and more recently by a range of new products such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products that are promoted on various platforms including social media and through women influencers.
These efforts target women and falsely link tobacco use to concepts of beauty, slimness, sophistication, prestige, freedom, romance and sexual allure.
In the attempts to improve its image, the tobacco industry also sponsors women’s sports, women’s organizations and women’s leadership programs, and has rolled out public relations campaigns on “Empowering Women” in about 30 countries.
The Financial Times has partnered with Philip Morris in an online gender equality conference. Tobacco companies even “celebrate” International Women’s Day, with a promise of gender equality, but ignore the tens of millions of women that are harmed by both their products and their business practices.
Transnational tobacco companies spend billions in marketing efforts that put more women in harm’s way but deny compensation to the millions of women who fall victim to tobacco use.
Women make up nearly 50 percent of the workforce on tobacco farms in low-income countries. They face additional costs in the form of serious negative environmental, health and social impacts of growing tobacco.
Tobacco incurs massive costs upon women, both as tobacco users and those subject to second-hand smoke exposure. These costs include a multitude of direct and indirect economic costs such as health-care costs, loss of income and diversion of family income which could instead be used to purchase food, education, housing, and holidays. It also includes environmental costs, and even the negative impact on relationships.
The number of women affected is enormous and spans high- to low-income countries. Even in highincome countries, it is the poor that smoke the most and hence are the most affected.
Women may not feel empowered to tell their husbands to quit smoking. Among some Asian cultures, men reported that their wives, children and other family members now openly pressure husbands, fathers, and other male family members to quit smoking.
This confrontation has had an impact not only on male smokers who feel that such pressure is an affront to their patriarchal authority within their households, but also on male smokers’ social standing within communities.
If women are not represented proportionately at the policy-making level, decision-making processes, conferences and committees, the issue of women and smoking can only too easily slip off the radar screen.
Or ‘women and children’ may even be considered together, which infantilizes women, and does not address their needs which are quite different from children’s needs.
The 1997 10th World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Beijing was the first world conference since 1967 to commit to gender equality. This meant equal numbers of women as men on planning committees, as chairpersons, and as plenary speakers.
In spite of being told by many parties that it was an impossible task, China backed gender equity, and it was lauded as the best conference ever. Gender equity has since become an enshrined principle in all subsequent world conferences.
The tobacco industry is unlikely to voluntarily change its practices, especially if these affect its bottom line — profit. It is up to governments to pass tobacco control legislation to ban all tobacco industry advertising, promotion and sponsorship.
All tobacco control action needs to be seen through a gender-sensitive lens, to prevent girls from being seduced into starting smoking.
Tobacco control will never be achieved unless the tactics of the industry are exposed, and the industry held to account. This is now beginning to happen.
For example, more than 180 countries are parties to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, with articles on eliminating tobacco promotion and forbidding tobacco industry interference with health policy being widely shared.
There is also a regular series of STOP Tobacco Industry Interference Indexes which expose industry tactics and grade countries based on their performance in resisting and countering the industry.
The bottom line is that tobacco control is good for both the health and economic wellbeing of women — and for the wealth of governments.
The author is a special adviser to the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control, senior policy adviser to the World Health Organization, and director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.