Women and smoking
A wide variety of diseases and medical phenomena affect the sexes differently, and the same holds true for the effects of tobacco.
In 2010 the Hamas-led Islamist government of Gaza imposed a ban on women smoking the popular nargilas in public.
"[1] The ban was soon lifted later that year and women returned to smoking in popular venues like the cafe of Gaza's Crazy Water Park.
[3] The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Gaza Strip) has arrested women for smoking in public.
In January 1908, the New York City Board of Aldermen unanimously passed the Sullivan Ordinance; it prohibited smoking by women in public places.
[10] The suffrage movement gave many women a sense of entitlement and freedom and the tobacco industry took advantage of the marketing opportunity.
The ads grew more extravagant with paid celebrity testimonials and far-reaching claims of how Lucky Strikes could improve their lives.
[12] Other brands offered similar ads appealing to a woman's sense of beauty and style and made cigarettes an alluring part of many women's lives.
The ad campaigns successfully promoted cigarettes as a product possessing specific qualities including equality, autonomy, glamour, and beauty.
[13] In 1929 Edward Bernays decided to pay women to smoke their "torches of freedom" as they walked in the Easter Sunday Parade in New York.
[15] In 1934, Edward Bernays was asked to deal with women's apparent reluctance to buy Lucky Strikes because their green and red package clashed with standard female fashions.
[16] The centerpiece of his efforts was the Green Ball, a social event at the Waldorf Astoria, hosted by Narcissa Cox Vanderlip.
Before the ball had actually taken place, newspapers and magazines (encouraged in various ways by Bernays's office) had latched on to the idea that green was all the rage.
[17] In a content analysis of North American and British editions of Vogue, Cheryl Krasnick Warsh and Penny Tinkler trace representations of women smokers from the 1920s through the 1960s, concluding that the magazine "located the cigarette within the culture of the feminine elite," associating it with "the constellation of behaviours and appearances presented as desirable characteristics of elitism, through the themes of lifestyle, 'the look', and feminine confidence".
Filters made cigarettes less harsh to smoke and offered the appearance of removing potentially harmful particles.
The 1970s ushered in the end of television advertising and the beginning of print ads carrying health warnings regarding the dangers of smoking.
Tobacco companies were barred from advertising on television, but smartly moved the market focus to sponsoring sporting and entertainment events.
In 1973, a widely publicized tennis match dubbed "The Battle of the Sexes" featured Billie Jean King, a long-time spokesperson for Virginia Slims, bedecked in the brand's sequins and colors.
Advertising campaigns looked to present more modern and cutting-edge packaging and language, appealing to a younger and hipper demographic.
By 2017 the percentage of current smokers had fallen to 14.0% and the proportion of ex-smokers increased, these rates remained at a stand-still throughout the end of the decade.
Research also continues to question whether women tend to be more susceptible to lung cancer, regardless of similar exposure as their male counterparts.
[44] When observing older women, those who smoke in their postmenopausal stages tend to have a lower bone density along with more hip fractures when compared to their non-smoker counterparts.
Offering appealing ads that depict cigarettes as modern, empowering, and liberating draws in women smokers who make every effort to be as western as possible.
[54] In his article, Fred C. Pampel looks into why these differences may exist and suggests reasons pertaining to gender equality, cigarette diffusion, economic factors and smoking policies.
The advertisements tend to include words such as 'menthol', 'mild' and 'light,' and seek out women through "alluring marketing campaigns, linking smoking with emancipation and glamour".
[58] The lack of strict tobacco control policies in developing countries sets up an environment where little to no advertising restrictions and taxation[59] are in place to buffer the impending increase in smoking among women.
What puts women in developing regions at an even greater disadvantage is the significant shift in tobacco production to their areas, where they are mainly involved in the harvesting.
There has been research surrounding this topic among many developed nations in order to explore and find the most successful methods, even for women.
Although these programs may not be set in place in the various areas they are most needed, several organizations have made an effort to draw smoking among women to the public's attention.
For instance, the World Health Organization (WHO) published The Tobacco Atlas[60] which is helpful in showing the scope of the issue among women on a worldwide scale.
