Sex and Gender - Smoking and Lung Cancer Rates

The first social grouping that I will talk about is gender. Gender is a distinction between sex and gender. Sex are the biological traits that societies use to assign people into the category of either male or female, whether it be through a focus on chromosomes, genitalia or some other physical ascription.

According to Stretch and White (2010), the life expectancy of women is much higher than men with women in our society living up to five years longer. Also infant mortality rates for boys are higher than they are for girls.

Research shows that men smoke more than women, smoking is likely to shorten the life expectancy. According to the chart below lung cancer rates are higher for men than women. There is a chance that it could shorten your life expectancy. [pic 1]

Chart 1 smoking and lung cancer rates

        [pic 2]

Why is the lung cancer rates failing in males but rising in females?

I have found out that new research has been made, The Office of National Statistics released new data which shows a slow rising trend in the disease amongst women between 1993 and 2008 - but a considerable fall amongst men in the same period. Cancer Research UK said the fall in lung cancer incidence in men over the last 20-30 years is directly linked to the fall in smoking prevalence in men in Britain in the second half of the last century. Eighty two per cent of men smoked in 1948 compared to 22 per cent today. In contrast, smoking was never a majority habit amongst British women, but prevalence of smoking among women in Britain remained stable after the war, when 41 per cent smoked, and 1970, when 44 per cent smoked, and the slow reduction of female smokers since. In 2009 there were 264,700 newly diagnosed cases of malignant cancers generally registered in England. The primary cause of lung cancer is cigarette smoke, with around 90 per cent of lung cancers in men and 83 per cent in women estimated to be caused by cigarettes. Lung cancer accounts for around 14 per cent of all cancers in men and 11 per cent of all cancers in women.

Graph 3 smoking rates and lung cancer rates in 2010

As you can see from the graph men have higher smoking rates than women, but looking closely at the lung cancer rates females have lower rates, so both of the percentage are showing that men are likely to die before women.

But according to the guardian newspaper I have discovered that Smoking falls to lowest level in UK since recording started in 1940s. “The proportion of adults smoking in the UK has declined to its lowest level since recording started in the 1940s, with official figures suggesting that the habit’s prevalence among over-18s fell from 19.8% in 2012 to 18.7% in 2013. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that men are still more likely to smoke – 21.1% of them against 16.5% of women – while a third of the population claim to be ex-smokers. Nearly half claim to have not smoked at all. Tobacco industry figures in the 1940s showed well over half the over-16s in the UK were smokers, with the proportion rising to nearly two-thirds of men. The proportion of women smokers did not peak until the late 1960s. When the ONS started collating figures in 1974, 45% of Britons smoked, 52% of men and 41% of women. The latter survey has previously indicated the decline in smoking might even have stalled with a stubborn 20% of over-16s still smoking, a percentage that was unchanged in three years from 2010-2012.”