This morning in a session we were talking about smoking rates and the direct costs of cigarettes. This was a lead on from a discussion on health and then consumption, where people spend thousands every year on entertainment activities, but complain that healthy food and gyms are too expensive - I agree, they are too expensive, but we also have to look at our priorities and we tend to consistently put our leisure above our own well-being - no matter the cost.
I looked into the costs of a pack of cigarettes quickly and found some interesting information.
Highest 5
I knew that Australia was the most expensive and by a fair way by the looks.
Lowest 5
As you can see, between the listed top and bottom, there is a massive 2200% difference.
Then I went to smoking rates and the average in Australia it is ~15% and Nigeria around ~9%, but this doesn't tell the whole story. For example:
A= Average M= Male F= Female
Norway: A= 22.25% M= 22.40% F= 22.10%
Denmark A= 17.00% M= 17.60% F= 16.40%
Sweden A= 20.60% M= 20.40% F= 20.80%
These are Scandinavian countries and perhaps this is where you can see that Finland is Baltic.
Finland A= 20.85% M= 23.20% F= 18.50%
Maybe smoking rates aren't where we should be talking about equality between the sexes, but it brought up an interesting set of comparisons. These numbers are taken from here by the way.
Australia A= 14.90% M= 16.70% F= 13.10%
Nigeria A= 9.25% M= 17.40% F= 1.10%
That is quite some disparity in the difference between Male sand female smoking numbers in Nigeria, but there are some very strange numbers.
South Korea A= 27.00% M= 49.80% F= 4.20%
Egypt A= 25.10% M= 49.90% F= 0.30%
Cameroon A= 22.35% M= 43.80% F= 0.90%
Vietnam A= 24.20% M= 47.10% F= 1.30%
Armenia A= 26.90% M= 52.30% F= 1.50%
This is just a selection that I randomly took that had large discrepancies between male and female smokers, but there are more behind the link I added above. I wonder what causes the differences, whether it is a reporting issue or perhaps a cultural thing. Are women really smoking so little, or is it taboo to publicly admit that they do? Whatever it is, that is a very big difference between some of those. I wonder how much impact this makes on global life expectancy and perhaps indicates why women live longer on average.
I find such very large differences questionable.
What's the split on Hive?
While it is impossible to truly know for numerous reasons, I wonder what the split on Hive is, as at least in my experience, it is generally pretty well even, where there are plenty of female creators of all kinds. However, there do not seem to be so many female developers and coders, but this is really no surprise, as that is the norm in the industry.
I actually think it is pretty cool that this is "so technical" yet from a creative standpoint, that doesn't seem to be an issue at all. And I am not assuming that women aren't technical, but in general, women on social media tend to gravitate more heavily toward the visual forms, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest - whereas men go for the more text heavy, Reddit and Twitter forum-types of places - and Hive is definitely more text than image.
While people like to get on equality horses and ride off into the sunset, in general, men and women do tend to communicate with different styles and perhaps this is also down to having different ways of processing and navigating information. Perhaps if more visual, the language used is more visual too, more emotive and expressive, as that tends to give a stronger mental image.
Maybe in the future there will be some cleaner interfaces designed for more visually orientated people, maybe 
I am hoping that eventually there will be more plug and play (as well as pay) experiences, where I can choose the layout of my blog or add widget-esque apps developed by Hive users, that either support my activities or give my audience a more tailored experience. These little UI bites can have a big effect on the UX. When it comes to a distributed network, we don't have to agree, we don't have to like the same things, we don't have to all sit in the same bath - we can develop and enjoy independently of each other while still being connected at the blockchain hip. We are a "one size fits all" community, but being decentralized means we don't have to all where the same clothes - it gives a freedom for development that no other platform can offer their userbase and of course, we as the users are also the ones who benefit from its ownership.
What has this got to do with smoking? Very little.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]