Wednesday 6 May 2009

Scary drunken women are taking over the country!

Binge drinking Britain: surge in women consuming harmful amounts of alcohol

Binge drinking among women has almost doubled since 1998, in a rapid narrowing of an alcohol gender gap that persisted for generations, research today from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows.

It found that the proportion of women who binge drink rose from 8% in 1998 to 15% in 2006. Over the same period, binge drinking among men increased only slightly, from 22% to 23%.


But almost a quarter of men drinking unhealthily is less of a concern than 15% of women? On top of this, the article puts the increase partly down to "women's increased independence and financial security." So more women are drinking more because they can afford to and there are less people telling them no. How terrible.

There are some other details in there that put this in perspective, such as the fact that the largest increase is in women over 65 and that young adults of both ages are drinking less, but my favourite is:

The JRF report said the narrowing of the alcohol gender gap could be partly explained by a tendency among many women to prefer wine to beer. The method adopted by the government for calculating a unit of alcohol changed in 2006, in effect doubling the number of units in a glass of wine.

Not exactly a "surge in women consuming harmful amounts of alcohol," is it?