Marjorie Williams recently angered some feminist organizations with a Washington Post column charging that the reason feminists aren’t more prominent in the fight against smoking is that they have been bought out by tobacco companies who donate large amounts of money to some women’s groups.
According to Williams, although a recent Surgeon General’s report, “Women and Smoking,” found that 30 percent of high school senior girls are smokers, women’s groups are busy fighting more amorphous, if trendy, issues. She complains,
The Feminist Majority Foundation’s Web site is all over the issue of gender apartheid in Afghanistan. The National Organization for Women is eager to apprise Web surfers of the state of political parity in French city councils. But you’ll search long and hard among the sites of the leading women’s organizations to find the news that 27,000 more women died of lung cancer than of breast cancer last year. The Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues listed 30 measures related to women’s health on its agenda for the last session of Congress, ranging from breast feeding rights to research on lupus, but smoking — the leading cause of preventable death among women — appeared nowhere on its list.
Okay, Williams does have a point about the excessively narrow focus that women’s groups have on breast cancer, but for the most part it is hard to agree with her analysis. First, as several women’s groups — included the Feminist Majority Foundation — pointed out in reply to Williams, they are active in anti-smoking efforts.
Second, is feminist involvement in anti-smoking efforts really going to make any difference? Is there any American alive today, including high school seniors, who isn’t aware that smoking dramatically increases the risk of lung cancer? Williams could have just as easily pointed to the various men’s movement organizations, none of whom to my knowledge has made lung cancer a pressing issue even though, as Williams acknowledges, more men still die from the disease than women. But why should they get involved? The risks of smoking are well-publicized in other venues.
Williams seems to think there is something particularly wretched about the fact that Phillip Morris, through donations it makes, includes an item in its annual report that it is the largest private source of money for battered women’s programs.
I’m not sure why feminists should feel guilty for accepting donations from a legal industry unless Williams agrees with the radical feminists that women simply are not moral actors and cannot make choices in their personal lives such as whether or not to smoke.
Source:
This kills women. Do feminist groups even care? Marjorie Williams, The Washington Post, April 11, 2001.