The history of women's relationship with alcohol constitutes a profound commentary on U.S. cultural attitudes about gender and power. Women who don't drink traditionally have been viewed as "good," "moral," "women of sterling virtue," but those who do have been stigmatized as sick, evil corrupters of men and children. For men, out-of-control behavior associated with drinking historically has been accepted and even encouraged. But the alcoholic woman is both a victim of her addiction and victimized as a result. The social concern at issue is control—who has it and who doesn't.
The double standard applied to women's drinking has its roots deep in the history of Western culture. In first-century Rome, drinking by women was a crime. A woman suspected of drinking was assumed to have betrayed her husband sexually and could be put to death.
U.S. attitudes toward female alcoholics were prefigured by England's. For ladies of the upper classes, drinking was considered a refined and elegant pastime. But in the 1750s, when Parliament lifted restrictions on selling gin to raise local revenues, the impoverished who drank to make their lives in the slums of London more bearable died of disease in record numbers. Public outrage at this "gin epidemic" focused on women because they were considered to be abusing their children.
During the U.S. colonial era alcohol was regarded as a medicinal tool and an economic mainstay—women brewed and sold beer to supplement household income. Women ran taverns. Women could drink but not too much. Those who did could be forced to wear a large letter D.
By the early 1800s, women had begun to organize to fight the effects of male drunkenness. Alcohol was viewed as an "evil force" that undermined the purity and sanctity of the home and family. But the real danger of male drinking involved the random violence and abuse of women and children that accompanied it. Women frequently were abandoned and left in poverty by drinking husbands.
The subtleties of the societal struggles for control also were being fought on other levels. While the somewhat ridiculed members of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) struggled to bring about Prohibition, some were unknowingly becoming addicted to the patent medicines of the era, which contained at least 50 percent alcohol and often opium, heroin, or cocaine. Women were encouraged to buy these elixirs to improve their moods and to treat the "weaknesses" of womanhood. "Good" women could be drugged for economic gain and could be the silent victims of men's alcohol abuse, but they could not overtly drink to excess—or have the right to vote.
Prohibition was passed and repealed. Women won the vote. After World War I, women reacted to the double standards that controlled their behavior. Prohibition created a backlash in which women drank more rather than less. Women ran speakeasies, much as they had run taverns in colonial times. But by the end of World War II, women were returned to the home. And just as the women of the WCTU had unwittingly taken to patent medicines to temper their unrest, the housewives of the 1950s became one more wave of victims of the medical establishment, which plied them with prescription tranquilizers and sedatives. Over the next three decades, women's increased drinking was viewed as an outcome of their attempts to adopt male roles.
In the 1990s it is estimated that almost six million women suffer from alcohol abuse or addiction. The double standard regarding control still applies. Society takes punitive measures against women who abuse alcohol during pregnancy. Women are still viewed as promiscuous when they drink, even though the research increasingly shows that alcohol use makes women more vulnerable to sexual abuse by males. Women have less access to treatment programs than men because of inadequate access to child care. Women typically participate in the treatment of spouses, but the same is not true of males whose wives are affected by alcohol. Men are much more likely to leave alcoholic wives than women are to leave alcoholic husbands. Women alcoholics have higher rates of suicide and prescription-drug overdose than do males and higher rates of depression. Lesbians, who face social stigma and must often depend on bar culture for social contact, have higher rates of alcoholism than do women in the general population. African American women abstain from drinking more than other groups but tend to drink more when they do drink. Latinas are less likely to be heavy drinkers than women of other ethnic groups, and Native American women tend to have higher rates of alcohol-related deaths. Rates of alcohol use among Asian American women increase relative to their assimilation into "American" culture. The heaviest drinking rates tend to be among women who are divorced, separated, or never married. Among women who abuse alcohol, between 60 and 70 percent have been sexually or physically abused or have experienced family violence as children.
In this modern, medically controlled culture, women who drink are considered sicker than men who drink. And a woman affected by a man's drinking is labeled "codependent," although "overresponsible" behavior is sanctioned, considered central to a woman's role. Women, who are often only too ready to adopt the label, pathologize themselves. Feminist critics challenge the concept of codependency as the woman-blaming label that it can be. They question the patriarchal bias of twelve-step programs and the concept of accepting that they are "powerless" as part of their recovery. Increasingly, feminist mental health workers advocate approaches to addiction treatment that take into account women's special needs and the shaming impact of the double standard.
Drinking is a multilevel phenomenon—a function of genetic and emotional vulnerability, as well as social conditioning. But the realities of alcohol abuse in this country are a testament to women's continued oppression. The effects on their bodies and emotions are poorly researched except when children are involved. The ways that male violence, sexual exploitation, racism, homophobia, and economic exploitation are implicated in women's addictions are rarely discussed. Attitudes toward alcohol abuse leave one more extremely negative mark in the annals of U.S. women's history, one that calls for both political and health care attention as well as the continued fight for female rights.
Claudia Bepko, ed., Feminism and Addiction (New York: Haworth Press, 1991); Jo-Ann Krestan, "The Baby and the Bathwater," Women and Power: Perspectives for Family Therapy, edited by T.J. Goodrich (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991); Marian Sandmaier and Claudia Bepko, The Invisible Alcoholics: Women and Alcohol, 2nd edition (Blue Ridge Summit, Penn.: TAB Books, 1992).
Jo-Ann Krestan
See also
Prohibition and Temperance.
