11 March 2026
By Dr. Mary Assunta & Atty. Faith Laperal – BusinessMirror
This year’s International Women’s Day theme “Give to Gain” must put the spotlight on initiatives that genuinely empower women, not on corporate gestures that advance hidden and lethal agendas. When a corporation touts to “give,” the question is simple: who really gains?
Not all corporate giving is good. Some initiatives bring more harm than good, and some corporations are banned from engaging in so-called “charitable giving” because such activities function as marketing and political influence rather than philanthropy.
Southeast Asia is gripped by a growing tobacco epidemic. In 2023, about 474.7 billion cigarettes were sold in ASEAN with the highest consumption in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. About 129 million adults smoke in the region with over half—63.1 million—residing in Indonesia alone. Alarmingly, adolescent girls often smoke at rates higher than adult women, including 9.1 percent vs 5.8 percent in the Philippines, 5.2 percent vs 1.7 percent in Thailand, and 2.4 percent vs 1.4 percent in Malaysia, a clear sign that the tobacco industry is recruiting young girls to be its future market.
Although women generally smoke at lower rates than men, the numbers cannot be dismissed with the figure adding up to millions of women in the region using tobacco. It shows the deliberate targeting of women and girls, as the industry sees this relatively low-prevalence as an opportunity to grow its market.
The use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities is a well-known tactic to detract attention away from the harm this industry causes. Globally at least 74 countries have banned such activities. Under the treaty, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, CSR activities are classified as a form of promotion and governments are called upon to ban them. The industry is using benign terms such as “social contributions” or “sustainability initiatives” to escape regulation. These tactics were carefully designed to sanitize an industry profiting from addiction, illness, and death.
The sums spent on CSR are miniscule in comparison to the economic and human toll of tobacco and nicotine. True giving for women’s gain cannot come from an industry whose products kill the very beneficiaries it claims to care about.
PHL should not let harmful charity exploit Women’s Month
March is also National Women’s Month in the Philippines, with the subtheme this year, “Lead like the Babaylans, Filipinas!,” honoring precolonial women healers central to their communities’ wellbeing. Yet while we celebrate women as healers, public health policy increasingly allows harmful industries like tobacco to wield influence under the guise of tokenistic empowerment.
According to the World Health Organization, there are 16.3 million tobacco users aged 15 and above in the Philippines in 2024, including 1.75 million women. Their addiction to nicotine contributes to the tobacco industry’s profits. Non-smoking women are exposed to secondhand smoke at home, in workplaces, and public spaces. Many also shoulder the caregiving burden for family members who develop tobacco-related illnesses.
Despite their harms, tobacco companies are still allowed to publicly flaunt their CSR to women farmers in tobacco-growing regions of the Philippines. These programs are often promoted as “empowerment initiatives,” yet they tie women to low-wage, risky work in tobacco agriculture, perpetuating dependence on an industry that profits from addiction and illness. Women in these farming communities face exposure to nicotine, unsafe labor conditions, and limited alternatives—while being used as part of a corporate image-building strategy.
This month, the Philippines Commission on Women (PCW) called for “Protection and Justice for All Women Worldwide!” That call deserves to be taken seriously, especially in sectors where women continue to bear disproportionate harm.
As part of an inter-agency effort, the National Tobacco Administration (NTA) has marked Women’s Month on its social media, affirming support for gender equality. But NTA cannot genuinely advance gender equality while women farmers remain tied to tobacco cultivation. In these tobacco-growing communities, women suffer from green tobacco sickness, endure daily exposure to toxic pesticides and herbicides, absorb income losses from unstable harvests, and have little to no control over the prices set for their tobacco leaves.
Despite the Philippines’ obligations under the WHO FCTC to provide alternative livelihoods, the NTA has not been focusing on reducing the dependence of women farmers to tobacco growing and cultivation. In the spirit of PCW’s call for “Protection and Justice for All Women,” the agency has largely failed to protect and deliver justice to the women who are most vulnerable in the tobacco sector. Genuine empowerment requires expanding safe, sustainable livelihood opportunities that allow women farmers to move beyond the risks inherent in tobacco production.
Exposure to tobacco harm extends beyond those who smoke or work in tobacco cultivation. In 2021, 21.8 percent of Filipino adults, including women, were exposed to tobacco smoke inside their homes while 12.9% were exposed at work. In public spaces, 62.3 percent reported exposures in bars and clubs, 9.2 percent in restaurants, and 12.2 percent in public transportation.
Among daily smokers, women consume an average of 6.7 cigarettes per day, spending around P963.6 per month on manufactured cigarettes. When women fall ill from these legally sold and aggressively promoted products, they pay their own bills while the tobacco industry continues to profit by simply moving on to targeting its next victims.
These are not isolated gaps, but rather predictable consequences of a system that prioritizes corporate gain over women’s health, safety, and economic security.
Existing laws cover both women’s rights and tobacco interference, but they will only protect women if fully enforced. This means:
- Banning tobacco-related CSR in the Philippines;
- Charge the tobacco industry to be liable for the harm they cause to women and girls;
- NTA must shift farmers away from toxic tobacco to safer alternate livelihoods.
Women’s empowerment cannot be built on an industry that profits from addiction and illness. If we are serious about justice for women, we must stop allowing tobacco companies to launder their image through charity, hold them accountable for the harms they cause, and support women farmers in transitioning to safer and sustainable livelihoods.
Dr. Mary Assunta is the Senior Policy Advisor of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA). SEATCA, a multi-sectoral non-governmental alliance, assists ASEAN countries to accelerate and effectively implement tobacco control measures in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
Atty. Faith Laperal is the Executive Director of HealthJustice Philippines. HealthJustice is a public health think tank that aims to bridge the gap between health and law to empower Filipinos to make healthy choices.