Women now drink as much booze as men

The cocktail-glass ceiling has been shattered.

Women around the world now use and abuse alcohol almost as much as men, according to a sobering study from the University of New South Wales in Australia.

There was a time when men boozed it up 12 times as much as women. The tilt toward parity is most evident among young adults.

Researchers reached this conclusion after analyzing data from 68 relevant studies involving 4 million people published from 1948 and 2014 that compared boozing habits by gender and age.

Men born between 1891 and 1910 were 2.2 times more likely to consume alcohol than women born within that window. Men were three times as likely to drink to levels that would become problematic and 3.6 times as likely to develop health problems as a result of boozing.

But over time, the gap between genders has narrowed significantly.

Men born between 1991 and 2000 were just 1.1 times as apt to consume alcohol than women. Men were only 1.2 times as likely to drink to problematic levels and 1.3 times as likely to develop health issues from drinking.
“Alcohol use and alcohol use disorders have historically been viewed as a male phenomenon,” researchers noted in the journal BMJ Open. “The present study calls this assumption into question and suggests that young women in particular should be the target of concerted efforts to reduce the impact of substance use and related harms.”
Further research is needed to know if the convergence is because of men boozing less or women drinking more, though other studies support the latter. It’s not altogether surprising, considering shifts in women’s roles.