Background:
Tobacco needs special attention in the South-East Asia region owing to its high prevalence and up swinging use, including India. India is the second largest consumer of tobacco in the world. Tobacco leads to 1 million deaths each year - 9 % of all non-communicable diseases compared with 2 % of all communicable disease related deaths. If current trends continue tobacco will account for 13% of all deaths by 2020. This study aims to investigate the awareness level among women about impact of tobacco use on health and their intention to quit tobacco.

Methods:
Data from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey, India (2009-2010) has been used for analysis purpose. We examined the prevalence of tobacco use among females in India by socio-demographic characteristics and factors associated with awareness level and intention to quit tobacco. Statistical techniques such as bi-variate analysis and binary logistic regression were used.

Results:
Results shows that more than one-fifth of the women in India are currently consuming tobacco and more than one fourth of female starting tobacco use before the age of 18. Rural women (38.1%) were more likely to notice health warning on tobacco products than urban women. Majority of women (90%) believed that smoking cause lung cancer, stroke and heart attack however only 3% of them are intended to quit tobacco. About 5 % of poor women tobacco users thought of quitting the tobacco use as compared to just 1.6 %.of rich women.

Conclusions:
The use of tobacco among the rural and the illiterate women is higher as compared to the urban women, keeping this in views, the government must draft some special focus policies and programmes so that, they can provide targeted intervention to these group. Enhancing government intervention on motivational campaign could be helpful in curbing the tobacco use among women.