Do women drink as much as men?

Women are catching up to men in rates of alcohol consumption and this has important implications for how we think about our community response to harmful alcohol use.

Historically, men have been more likely to drink alcohol than women and to drink in quantities that damage their health. However, evidence points to a significant shift in the drinking landscape with rates of alcohol use appearing to converge among men and women born more recently. In a bid to quantify this trend, we pooled data from 68 studies in 36 countries with a total sample size of over four million men and women.

All of the studies we looked at reported data on both men’s and women’s drinking across at least two time periods. Some data were available from men and women born in the early 1900s, other data from men and women born in the late 1900s, but each data point represented the ratio of men’s to women’s alcohol use for those born within a specific five-year time window. Taken together we were able to map ratios across the entire period from as early as 1891 right up to the year 2000 and everything in between.

We grouped data according to three broad definitions: any alcohol use (in other words being a drinker or not), problematic alcohol use (binge or heavy episodic drinking) and alcohol-related harms (negative consequences as a result of drinking such as accidents or injuries or a diagnosis of an alcohol use disorder).