World: Tobacco industry … empowering women, one cigarette at a time?

Celebrated globally on 8 March, International Women’s Day (IWD) honours the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also serves as a call to action for greater gender equality and is an opportunity to highlight the continued discrimination women face in areas such as education and employment.

The theme for IWD 2017 was ‘Be Bold For Change’, and IWD event organisers and participants were urged to embrace ‘bold pragmatic action to accelerate gender parity.’ The tobacco industry, true to form, issued corporate social responsibility messages in an attempt to reposition itself as generous, accountable and operating to high standards. IWD was exploited as an opportunity by both British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI) to take to social media and post corporate feel-good content tagged with the #beboldforchange theme.

PMI included a 2-min video (14 000 views 24 hours after posting) on its Facebook page post that opens with the statement that “changing one woman’s life can benefit a whole community”. The video goes on to state that “for decades PMI has invested around the world to empower women to reach their full potential”. The video also featured the Director of the Womanity Foundation discussing the value of partnership between corporations and the social development sector. PMI is a partner of the Womanity Foundation and supports its social development capacity building and mentoring programs in India and Brazil.

BAT posted two IWD messages on Twitter featuring a set of rotating images of female BAT employees. In the first post, three images of women, who appear to be employed in technical …