A woman’s relationship to alcohol can be slightly different than that of a man’s, both in the way they experience it and the reasons they drink in the first place.
Why alcohol affects women differently than men
Women who consume the same amount of alcohol as men will have a higher blood-alcohol level. Because women metabolize alcohol differently, one drink for a women is about equivalent to 2 drinks for a man. There are several reasons that females are more vulnerable to alcohol’s effects. The first is body weight. As a general rule, women tend to be slightly smaller than a man, which means they are going to get drunk faster from the same amount of liquor.
Their bodies also have more fat, which retains alcohol, and less lean muscle mass, which burns through it. They also have less water, which normally dilutes alcohol. This means that when a man and woman of equal body size drink the same amount of alcohol, the woman will get drunk faster. Women metabolize alcohol more slowly than men, meaning it takes longer for them to rid it from their system. (Baroana et al. 2001) They have less of an enzyme called dehydrogenase that breaks down alcohol before it enters the bloodstream. (Glaser, 2013) Women produce only about 60% as much alcohol dehydrogenase as men. (Discover, 2009) Finally, hormonal changes associated with the menstrual cycle can increase the absorption of each glass by as much as 20%. (O’Rourke, 2013)
As a result, women are also more susceptible to the harmful effects of regular alcohol consumption. Alcohol related liver and brain damage are more likely to appear earlier in female alcoholics, and women will typically experience adverse symptoms and health problems at lower levels of use. (Baraona et al., 2001)
Alcohol guidelines & recommendations for women
Because of these differences, the official guidelines for safe levels of alcohol consumption are lower for women than they are for men. The National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services says that for American women, anything more than a drink a day is risky. Yet in countries such as France, Italy and Spain, the recommended safe threshold is nearly double that. So these standards are rather arbitrary, and what’s okay for one woman may be harmful to another, so use your best judgment.
The number of women who drink
The drinking rates among women have been steadily rising in recent years. One analysis of the alcohol habits of 85,000 Americans conducted in 2002 found that 47% of white women reported being regular drinkers, up from 37% in 1992. The percentage of black women who said they drink regularly also rose, form 21% to 30%, and among Hispanics, it grew from 24% to 32%. Meanwhile, between 1999 and 2008, the number of young women who ended up in emergency rooms for being dangerously intoxicated rose by 52%. The same rate among young men edged up by only 9%. (Glaser, 2013)
The alcohol consumption of women often matches those they’re close to. (Hanson et al., 2004) So if a woman’s partner drinks a lot, she is more likely to do so herself. While alcoholism is more likely to strike women later in life, binge drinking is often a dominion for the young. Among women who binge drink, 24% are college-age, 10% are between 25 and 64, and 3% are older than 65. (Glaser, 2013)
The reasons why women drink
Women drink for many of the same reasons as men, with a few key differences. Women are more likely than men to fall into a habit of regular drinking later in life, and they are more likely to drink in response to life’s challenges. Women ages 21 to 34 are the least likely to drink if they are in stable marriages and working full time. (Hanson et al., 2004)
Women–and especially young girls–often drink in order to provide an excuse for engaging in sexual behavior. Girls typically face more repressive cultural messages about their sexuality, and drinking allows girls to “act out being sexually assertive, carefree, liberated,” says professor Laina Bay-Cheng. (Jayson, 8-22-2011) So getting drunk is a way of loosening their inhibitions and a means of acting on their sexual impulses without being branded a slut. They can always blame their behavior on the drinking rather than their desires.
Many women are also under the false impression that guys want them to drink. One survey of college students found that women often assume (incorrectly) that men want them to drink more. Around 71% of the women surveyed said they thought men wanted them to drink excessively. More than a quarter said they thought men would be more likely to want to be friends with a woman who drinks 5 or more drinks in one setting, and 17% thought men would be most sexually attracted to a woman who drank that much. But these estimates were nearly double what the men said they preferred in the same survey. (Jayson, 3-10-2009)
How women experience alcohol
Even the psychological experience of drinking alcohol can be different for women than it is for men. Some studies have found that after drinking, men report feeling more powerful, often overstating their accomplishments and feeling over-confident ill their abilities. Women, on the other hand, say alcohol tends to make them more affectionate, sexy, and feminine. It shows once again just how big of a role cultural factors are in alcohol’s effects, and how one’s own personality and expectations influence how drunkenness si expressed.