“Free Women”, a prevention campaign aimed at women

The Alliance Against Tobacco (ACT) and the French Federation of Cardiology (FFC) are joining forces to encourage women to quit smoking. In France, one in five women smokes and 20,000 of the 75,000 annual deaths from tobacco are women. This toll is getting worse in the 21st century: in twenty years, the number of deaths of women attributable to tobacco has doubled. These are all arguments that convinced the ACT and the FFC to launch, on the occasion of World No Tobacco Day, a prevention campaign focused on women [1].

Two commercials, one with Wendy Renard, captain of the French women's football team, the other with YouTuber Marie Lopez, aka Enjoy Phoenix, will be broadcast from May 31 and June 2. A campaign is also being launched on social networks, in order to engage in "live" sessions with subscribers.

  [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gkr9Q4B_Nas&ab_channel=ACT-Alliancecontreletabac[/embed]

Risks specific to women

While the consequences of smoking are the same as for men, some specific features of female smoking have been highlighted. Women have a cardiovascular risk 25% higher than that of men, leading to an increasing number of strokes and premature heart attacks. Certain risks to pregnancy and fertility (ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, low birth weight or small size newborns, etc.) are also specifically female. The combination of tobacco and the contraceptive pill increases cardiovascular risks and should more often encourage smoking cessation. While it is frequently used to regulate weight, cigarettes promote the development of abdominal fat in women, which is a source of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Specificities are also observed in terms of tobacco addiction, with women generally having more difficulty quitting smoking. One of the hypotheses put forward would be related to the moment of withdrawal in the menstrual cycle, the presence of progesterone being more favorable than that of estrogen. While young women smoke less today, their elders are, on the other hand, massively affected by tobacco and pay a heavy price. Mortality from lung cancer now exceeds that from breast cancer.

ACT advocates for the launch of studies exploring in more detail the specificities of female smoking, in order to better advise women when quitting. It also proposes providing health professionals with sufficient training to meet the needs of different smoker profiles and provide women with tailored advice.

A Century of Marketing to Women

Beginning in the 1920s, tobacco marketing targeting women has significantly increased the proportion of female smokers by relying on three drivers: emancipation, weight control, and stress and affect management. This marketing also contributes to reinforcing gender stereotypes by maintaining an image of tobacco associated with glamour and finesse [2]; it suggests that tobacco is a vector of freedom, while it subjects women to dependency and makes them, above all, loyal customers.

The tobacco industry's marketing to women is modernizing. Today, it takes the form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), under which the industry funds and sponsors women's associations and women's sporting events around the world to better reach the female audience [3]. It is also spread via social networks, in the form of advertisements and paid influencers, to capture the attention of teenage girls by updating old advertising recipes around electronic cigarettes and heated/grilled tobacco [4]. Detecting and revealing these commercial strategies requires constant vigilance.

The ACT website - Alliance Against Tobacco Keywords: Women, ACT, Alliance against tobacco, marketing, health, tobacco industry, CSR ©Generation Without Tobacco

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[1] Alliance Against Tobacco, Tobacco, this obstacle to women's freedom. Press kit for the “Femmes Libres” campaign. Published on (May 31) 2021, consulted on (May 31) 2021. [2] Génération Sans Tabac, Women: A Century of Targeted Marketing by the Tobacco Industry. Published March 11, 2020, accessed May 28, 2021. [3] Hill SE, Friel S, 'As Long as It Comes off as a Cigarette Ad, Not a Civil Rights Message': Gender, Inequality and the Commercial Determinants of Health. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Oct 29;17(21):E7902. [4] Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids, HAS lifetime of damage. How Big Tobacco's predatory marketing harms the health of women and girls. Published on May 26, 2021, accessed on May 27, 2021. National Committee Against Smoking |