‘Smoke like a man, die like a man’?: A review of the relationship between gender, sex and lung cancer

Lung cancer is one of the most important ‘avoidable’ causes of death world-wide. It is also one in which differences in relation to sex and gender are especially significant. Increasing lung cancer deaths amongst women alongside stable or decreasing deaths amongst men in many countries have substantially altered the male : female ratio in this disease and produced a need to understand differences between men and women in lung cancer risk, and how they relate to sex and gender. This paper reviews research on differences between men and women in lung cancer incidence, mortality and survival, focusing on material which adds to our understanding of the complex differences between each group. This review suggests that the risk of lung cancer may be different for men and women in response to a complex interaction between biological factors such as hormonal difference and gendered factors such as smoking behaviour. In particular womenʹs apparently greater relative risk of lung cancer and the differences between men and women in the risk of specific histological types of lung cancer need to be understood from a perspective in which both biological influences and gender influences are drawn out.