Gender blind spots undermine tobacco control research

Ahead of World No Tobacco Day on May 31, York University researchers with Global Strategy Lab (GSL) have published a paper that finds a lack of gender analysis in tobacco control research. The researchers say this means that we could be missing out on important strategies accounting for gendered behaviors that could help smokers quit. The paper, published today in BMJ Tobacco Control, is the first in a series of papers coming out of York University and GSL on gender and smoking. 

In the tobacco control research community, we're not looking at gender, and even though we all know that gender is a hugely important determinant of tobacco use and how effective tobacco control policies are. This lack of a gender lens limits our understanding of the effectiveness of tobacco control policy interventions and fails to address gendered smoking behaviors." 

Mathieu Poirier, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health, York Research Chair in Global Health Equity and Director of Global Strategy Lab

The researchers, including Poirier, GSL Investigator and York University researcher Tina Nanyangwe-Moyo and GSL research assistant and York researcher Laura R Pereira, examined 43 peer-reviewed studies on tobacco control and found that while some studies looked at basic comparisons between men and women, only five evaluated the gender-specific impacts of tobacco control policies. 

"The incorporation of gender in the peer-reviewed research is lackluster," says Nanyangwe-Moyo. "We hope our contributions will show the importance of looking at the differences in smoking behaviors of men and women around the world in creating effective policy and smoking cessation programs." 

While this study is the first to examine the intersection of tobacco-control and gender-based policy, it builds on existing research from the Global Strategy Lab on smoking and global policy. 

In Canada, while smoking rates are on the decline, 14.8 per cent of men and 10.2 per cent of women smoke. Globally, more than a fifth of the world's population uses tobacco, with the World Health Organization reporting 36.7 per cent of men and 7.8 of women using tobacco products in 2020. 

Poirier says they chose to focus on cigarette smoking in their research rather than vaping as it is the most common form of tobacco use and because of its level of harm.

"There are harms associated with vaping itself, but when we look at the number one preventable cause of premature mortality and morbidity, it's combustible tobacco use," he says. 

GSL is hosting a discussion of how to strengthen tobacco controls globally on Thursday May 29 at 10 a.m. EDT.