How to Make Policies More Gender-Sensitive Introduction

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Abstract	Introduction Although tobacco control policies have been on record since the late 1800s, most of the early tobacco control legislation focused on policies banning sales of tobacco to youth. For example, an 1890 District of Columbia ordinance prohibited the sale of cigarettes to minors in the United States, 1 and in 1900, smoking by persons under 20 years of age was prohibited in Japan, where the sale of cigarettes to minors was also banned. 2 Once the epidemiological evidence on the relationship between smoking and lung cancer and other diseases emerged, 3–6 tobacco control initiatives began to focus more broadly on prevention and cessation of smoking for the public's health. Until recently, tobacco control initiatives did not refl ect the population's diversity and did not specifi cally address women's concerns. Diversity was lacking in policy largely because it was missing in the early epidemiological research that fuelled such policy. Because the smoking epidemic started primarily among upper-class men in industrialized countries, men were hit fi rst by its devastating health consequences, making them prime targets for research. At the time, women were considered a minority of the smoking population and were not of great interest to clinicians. As a result, a signifi cant opportunity was lost in early research to study ways in which smoking might aff ect women's health. Because of this missing research demographic, most policies were crafted without concern for the rates of smoking or tobacco-related disease among women. Fortunately, this male-centred approach has since been challenged, and new directions are being sought. Th is chapter examines a policy model for understanding the relationship between gender and tobacco control with a focus on women. In addition, it highlights the tobacco control policies of four countries—China, South Africa, Sweden, and the United Kingdom—to provide four distinct case-studies that depict the incorporation (or non-incorporation) of gender into health policy. Th ese countries were selected because they exemplify industrialized and developing countries at diff ering stages of tobacco control programme development with varying rates of smoking prevalence among women. South Africa and China represent expanding markets for the tobacco industry, and women are being specifically targeted by marketing eff orts. Sweden provides an interesting case-study, as it is one of the few countries in which the smoking prevalence of women is higher than that of men. Finally, the United Kingdom, though similar to other industrialized countries in terms of smoking …
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Alternate Webpage(s)	https://www.who.int/tobacco/publications/gender/en_tfi_gender_women_how_make_policies_more_gender_sensitive.pdf
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2010/9789241599511_eng_Chapter10-13.pdf
Language	English
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Content Type	Text