Female 'Empowerment' Is Great — Except When it Comes to Smoking

What does "empowerment" mean for women around the globe? More smoking deaths, for one. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reports that in countries where more women work in government office, have equal voting rights and relative parity to men in terms of income, women also smoke more.

The UNDP measured levels of national female empowerment in 74 countries. In countries with poor female empowerment scores, like China, Pakistan, Uganda and Saudi Arabia, men were five times more likely to smoke than women. By contrast, in countries like Australia, Canada, Sweden and the U.S., where women have made great strides toward gender equality, the unfortunate side effect is a parity of a different kind: women smoke almost as much as men do.