[Gender signs on female smoking: a sociological approach to women's cigarette smoking]

Based on an extensive review of specialized literature about woman smoking, this essay aims to promote a better understanding of this issue, proposing the adoption of Social Sciences concepts, particularly at gender category, to support more comprehensive and encompassing approaches towards prevention and health assistance of tobacco smoking women. Analyzing the epidemiologic scenario of woman smoking, three tendencies could be identified--pauperization, feminilization and juvenilization--confirming that many of women disease are related to social and gender inequalities. Gender dimension is associated to woman smoking through women's protest pathologies which historically express dissatisfactions and social contradictions experienced by women. The essay concludes that the meaning attributed to cigarette by women has strong connections with the ways gender relations are organized in current society, as well as with their relationships with health services, demanding broader and integral approaches of women's health, including woman smoking.