Africa: women and smoking · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Jackie Tumwine asks, “Does tobacco empower the African woman?”:
“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.”