Women drink nearly as much as men (blame wine o’ clock!)

WOMEN are drinking nearly as much as men thanks to a booming ‘wine o’clock’ culture, experts say.

A major study spanning more than 100 years reveals that the gender gap in alcohol consumption has almost vanished.

Today’s young women are almost as likely to drink as men – and they binge and drink to dangerous levels nearly as often.

The global study, published in the medical journal BMJ Open, warned that women risk paying the price with their health.

Last night, campaigners said the trend is being driven by a British ‘wine o’clock’ culture in which women regularly drink at home, consuming cheap alcohol bought from supermarkets.

The trend, partly driven by the decline of the male-dominated pub, means it is more acceptable than ever for women to drink at home, whether young or old. Images of celebrities enjoying themselves on nights out have also helped remove some of the stigma attached to drinking by women. Today’s research – which considered the results of 68 previous studies – was led by the University of New South Wales in Australia and Columbia University in New York.

It found that young men born between 1991 and 2000 are 1.1 times more likely to drink at all than women of the same age. But men born between 1891 and 1910 were 2.2 times more likely to drink than women, the study found.

Today’s young men, now aged between 16 and 25, are 1.2 times more likely than women to have what researchers class as ‘problematic alcohol use’, compared to a threefold gap a century ago.

And young men today are only 1.3 times more likely to suffer health problems than women – a gap that a century ago stood at 3.6-fold. Overall, drinking levels in Britain are going down among adult men and women. But the gender gap is closing, and a hard core of women, about a fifth of all female drinkers, drink to hazardous levels.

Doctors all too often assume that heavy drinking is a male phenomenon, but the research shows that women are also paying the price with their health. Alcohol is a known risk for cancers of the bowel, liver, larynx and oesophagus, as well as increasing the risk of strokes, heart disease and brain damage. More than 64,000 women were admitted to English hospitals as a specific result of drinking in 2013/14, a 2.1 per cent increase on the year before. The figures for men went up just 0.7 per cent.

Women aged 15 to 19 were a third more likely than men of that age to be admitted to A&E for alcohol poisoning in 2013/14. There has been a 65 per cent rise in the number of female over-60s treated for alcoholism in the last five years.

Katherine Brown, of the Institute of Alcohol Studies, said: ‘Women are increasingly subjected to heavily-targeted marketing practices by alcohol companies. This is a global phenomenon, with drinks manufacturers producing sweet, often pink, fizzy alcoholic beverages that appeal to young women, with glamorous advertising campaigns.’

The Portman Group, founded by the alcohol industry to promote responsible drinking, said: ‘Government data shows significant declines in women’s alcohol consumption, frequency of drinking and binge-drinking rates over the last decade.

In Britain, alcohol consumption and harmful drinking patterns among both men and women are declining, but the greatest reductions are among women.’