Women play an extremely special role in the epidemiology, treatment and prognosis of lung cancer. According to U.S. statistics, lung cancer has surpassed breast cancer as the number one killer of women’s tumors since the 1980s, and the overall female mortality rate from lung cancer rose steadily from 1980 to 1990, peaked in 1990, and has remained at that high point ever since. The incidence rate for men rose to a peak of 86.5 per 100,000 in 1984 and has been declining since then, while the incidence rate for women has not stabilized until the 21st century. The difference in the incidence of lung cancer between men and women is mainly related to the change in smoking status, knowing that women were almost non-smokers until the 1950s, but today the proportion of women smokers in the West is gradually equal to that of men. Excessive life stress and imbalance in social roles may be important reasons for the increase in smoking among women. There are also differences between men and women in the distribution of lung cancer pathology types. In the United States, 1 in 5 female lung cancer patients is a nonsmoker. Women in the nonsmoking population are more likely to develop lung cancer than men, and the pathological type is predominantly adenocarcinoma. Adenocarcinoma in women is better treated than in men, especially in women who are more sensitive to the most promising targeted therapies available and therefore have better long-term survival than men.