Women and the alcohol Question in Turn-of-the Century Denmark(1)
[Foredrag på CRTI Clinical and Research Seminars. Addiction Research Foundation, Toronto, i: Scandinavian Journal of History, 24, 1999, s.45-73. ISSN 0346-8755.]
by Sidsel Eriksen
Whereas alcohol research formerly dealt with men's alcohol consumption (and abuse), recent years have seen much greater attention devoted to alcohol consumption among women.(2) Behind this attention lies the view that female alcohol consumption has been rising from a level that was "originally" low and unproblematic to an "unnaturally" high level (with the consequent rise of alcohol abuse among women) in pace with the increase in the numbers of women entering the labour market.(3) But is it so simple? What is a "natural" level of consumption for women, and how much do we know about the concrete development of alcohol consumption among women?
These are difficult questions to answer, mainly because there is no certain long term data on the extent of consumption - or for that matter abuse - of alcohol among women, but another factor is that the increased attention to the issue may in itself simply have had the effect of making women's alcohol consumption or abuse more visible. The American sociologist Kaye Middleton Fillmore, for example, has shown that assessments of the scope of women's drinking, all other things being equal, depend on the political climate for women. She says that, although there is a great deal to suggest that women's drinking patterns have been relatively constant since data became available in the 1940s, the extent of women's drinking in the 1940s and 1950s was nevertheless underestimated in research, while it has been overestimated in recent studies, simultaneously with the growing interest in women's issues.(4) Against this background, there is good reason to question the correctness of the supposedly original - and therefore natural - low level of alcohol consumption among women, and by extension, to consider how the idea arose, and above all to show what it means for what may be called specifically female patterns of drinking. > > > > Read More
