World No Tobacco Day survey

Gender difference in tobacco use and advertisement awareness

31 May 2010 was World No Tobacco Day. The theme was ‘Gender and tobacco with an emphasis on marketing to women’, and there is evidence to suggest that this topic is current and highly relevant. The differences in tobacco use and awareness of tobacco marketing by sex were examined by Centers for Disease Control and health officials in Bangladesh, Thailand, and Uruguay (among the first countries to report results). They analysed 2009 data from a newly instituted survey, the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS).

In all three countries, awareness of cigarette advertising was greater among females aged 15-24 years than women aged over 25. Similar age differences were observed among males in all three countries. In Bangladesh, awareness of bidi and smokeless tobacco marketing was widespread among females and did not vary by age. In Thailand, for both males and females, those who lived in urban areas were more likely to report exposure to cigarette marketing than those in rural areas. This relationship also was observed among males in Uruguay. In contrast, awareness of both bidi and smokeless tobacco marketing in Bangladesh was more common among males in rural areas than in urban areas.

Source: World Health Organisation and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 2010.

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