Women and the Tobacco Industry

The tobacco industry targets women with its marketing campaigns, often using women to market its deadly products to other women. The result? Over 200 million of the world’s smokers are women, with 2 million dying every year from tobacco use. Subsequently, these tactics have undermined global efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality.

This brief lays out the role of the tobacco industry in targeting women, tobacco use statistics by gender and examples of predatory marketing of female consumers.