Fewer women smoke than men. Globally, about 9 percent of women smoke compared with 40 percent of men. Female smoking rates in Asia remain particularly low, in spite of increased female independence and spending power. However, there is no room for complacency, as girls’ smoking is increasing in some countries.

Tobacco is deadly to women when used as the manufacturer intended. Tobacco kills more women than any other consumer product on the market. Two million women die from tobacco use every year, almost three-quarters of whom live in low- and middle-income countries.

Women are also affected by the smoking of men. Millions of women suffer, while approximately 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.

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 to a range of new products such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, on all platforms available, including social media and through women influencers. These target women and falsely link tobacco use to concepts of beauty, slimness, sophistication, prestige, freedom, romance and sexual allure.

In 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 a public relations campaign on “empowering women” in about 30 countries. Tobacco companies even “celebrate” March 8, International Women’s Day, with a promise of gender equality, but ignore the tens of millions of women 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 tobacco-farm workers in low-income countries. They face additional costs of serious negative environmental, health and social impacts of growing tobacco.

Tobacco incurs massive costs upon women, both tobacco users and those subject to secondhand-smoke exposure. These include a multitude of direct and indirect economic costs such as healthcare costs, loss of income, and diversion of family income — which could be used to purchase food, education, housing, holidays and more — environmental costs, and even costs to relationships. The number of women affected is enormous and spans high to low-income countries; even in high-income countries, it is the poor that smoke the most and are the most affected. Women often have less disposable income than men. Women are also affected by these same costs if male family members smoke and family income is reduced or even depleted.

Women may not feel empowered to ask or 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.

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 to a range of new products such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, on all platforms available, including social media and through women influencers

If women are not represented proportionately at the policymaking 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.

It can be done. 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 chairs, and as plenary speakers. In spite of being told from all sides it was an impossible task, China did it, 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, including corporate social responsibility activities, and sue or mandate compensation for the harms caused by tobacco use. All tobacco control action needs to be seen through a gender 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 beginning to happen. For example, over 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 grades countries on their performance in resisting and countering the industry.

The bottom line is that tobacco control is good for both the health and economic well-being of women (and for the wealth of governments).

The author is a special adviser to the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control, a senior policy adviser to the World Health Organization, and director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control.