Does tobacco empower the African woman?

Women all over Africa are struggling for empowerment, equality and freedom. The tobacco industry knows this full well and wastes no time or resources exploiting this need in order to win over this ‘untapped market’ for its deadly products.

According to UN about 250 million women worldwide are daily smokers. This figure excludes those using other forms of tobacco. The percentage of women smoking in developing countries (22%) is much higher than that of the developing world (9 %). However, the situation is gradually changing. The tobacco industry, faced with declining smoking rates in the West, is looking for new and replacement smokers among the youth and women of Africa- a continent in the early stages of the tobacco epidemic.

The low female smoking rates in Africa are due to the social and cultural taboo against women smoking and not due to health awareness. The tobacco industry, in order to maintain profits, is steadily breaking these cultural norms through its aggressive and deceptive promotion of cigarettes as symbols of empowerment, equality, glamour, modernity, sophistication and Western- style independence.

An editorial in tobacco industry journal ,Tobacco Reporter June 1990, highlights this fact. "Women are becoming more independent and, consequently, adopting less-traditional lifestyles. One symbol of their newly discovered freedom may well be cigarettes."

But just how liberating and sophisticated are the debilitating tobacco related illnesses?
Women experience all the negative health consequences that male smokers do as well as others that are gender specific. The 2004 report by the British Medical Association on Smoking and Reproductive Life revealed that smoking causes cancer of the cervix; infertility; painful, irregular or missed periods; early menopause; premature birth; low birth weight babies and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Passive smoking has adverse health effects in non smoking women. The problem of health inequities in Africa mean many African women do not have access to health care when they get sick.

How free is a woman trapped in a deadly addiction? The ‘light’ or ‘mild’ female brands give a false impression of being less dangerous than other brands

How economically empowered are women who slave away on tobacco farms in Africa? They are exposed to unhealthy working conditions, are burdened with impoverishing tobacco company loan schemes and they expect little pay and low food security.

Clearly tobacco does not empower women in Africa or elsewhere in the world. In fact, tobacco violates women’s rights most notably the right to health as provided for under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and other international human rights instruments. CEDAW also require states to take appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of health care. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in its preamble reiterates this important provision.

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control also expresses alarm at the increase in smoking and other forms of tobacco consumption by women and young girls worldwide. The FCTC not only provides for measures aimed at reducing tobacco’s toll on women and men, but also emphasizes the need for gender specific tobacco control strategies as well as full participation of women at all levels of policy making and implementation.

The recent report, ‘Turning a New Leaf: Women, Tobacco, and the Future’, by the International Network of Women Against Tobacco (INWAT) and the British Columbia Center of Excellence for Women’s Health recommends and gives guidelines for the gendered application of the FCTC provisions. The report also describes women’s tobacco use in different social contexts, identifies the health effects of tobacco, and describes women’s role in tobacco production and marketing. The report gives recommendations for the development of effective gender based tobacco control policy, programming and research. This will not only help prevent and reduce the toll of tobacco on the worlds’ women but will also enhance women’s rights and increase women’s equality. And that is indeed true empowerment.

HAPPY WOMEN’S DAY!!