A message from the Executive Director
On 8 March, the world will mark International Women’s Day. This year’s theme ‘gender parity’ is a timely reminder for public health professionals that women in low- and middle-income countries are a prime target for the tobacco industry. Smoking rates among this group are still comparatively low compared with rates of smoking among men, but aggressively targeted marketing aims to increase this figure.
Faced with the advancement of global tobacco control policy, the tobacco industry is fighting on all fronts to safeguard the future of its traditional business. As consumers, women from low- and middle-income countries offer an increasingly rare market opportunity in countries where public health policy is not yet strong enough to protect them. The industry’s compelling message to women associates smoking with glamour, independence and being slim, through high-end advertising and packaging similar to that used to sell beauty products.
In Europe we are now seeing the legacy of unfettered tobacco industry marketing that targets women – millions of lives ruined by cancer and heart disease. In Denmark in 2010, for example, 20 percent of all female deaths were attributable to smoking.
We still have the opportunity to prevent this devastating pattern from repeating itself throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America, and The Union and its partners are working to achieve this. Since 2007 we have been partnering with governments and civil society in low- and middle-income countries with the highest prevalence of tobacco use to introduce and implement measures proven to encourage users to quit and prevent young people taking up the habit. These include comprehensive bans on advertising and promotion of tobacco, increased taxes to make tobacco less affordable and bans on smoking in workplaces and public spaces.
At the December 2015 Union World Conference on Lung Health in Cape Town, our staff, members and grantees were amongst eminent panels of experts presenting research on the tobacco industry’s gender agenda, some of which was startling. If you missed them, you can watch videos of the sessions here: Inequalities, women and tobacco consumption; Women, smokeless tobacco and hookah use.
Article 4.2 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control states that parties: ‘need to take measures to address gender-specific risks when developing tobacco control strategies.’ Very few countries have done this to date.
We cannot afford to be complacent. Earlier this month new figures from the UK, which has a comprehensive tobacco control programme, revealed the first increase in smoking rates amongst young women since 2008. A week later Selfridges, one of the country’s major department stores, launched a multi-platform marketing campaign for a new range of ‘Smokin’ Hot’ designer wear, complete with iPhone cases and handbags shaped like cigarette packets and clothing featuring cigarettes dangling from pairs of red lips.
Given the tobacco industry’s aggressive and wide-ranging efforts to target women, International Women’s Day is the perfect time to re-state The Union’s strong commitment to taking equal and opposite action.
José Luis Castro, Executive Director
Home page: Delegates from the youth programme at the 16th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health in March 2015 performed at the closing ceremony, calling for No More Tobacco in the 21st Century. (Photo: Steve Forrest)