20 Aug 2023, https://www.livemint.com; Lisa Jarvis
A sharp rise in American women drinking is posing a health threat
New data shows that more women in the US are dying from alcohol than ever before. Public health authorities need to adopt more effective strategies to help women realize when their drinking can be a problem. Considering the many marketing messages pushing a “rosé all day” lifestyle, this campaign will be an uphill battle. A recent analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that alcohol-related deaths among women increased by nearly 15% per year between 2018 and 2020. The pandemic potentially exacerbated the trend, with overall alcohol-related deaths in the US rising precipitously in the spring of 2020 and continuing to rise through 2021.
“If you go back to 1990, there were five times as many men who had alcohol use disorder than women—now it’s two times,” says George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Men’s drinking has declined, while women are drinking more. The trend starts early: College-age women now surpass their male counterparts in binge drinking, Koob says. Those habits used to get curtailed when women married and had children, but with more women delaying or forgoing both, heavy-drinking behaviour persists longer. According to a recent study, delayed motherhood is one of the factors creating a larger group of women at risk of alcohol abuse disorder.
Women at the top of the socioeconomic spectrum appear to be driving the change. “Increases in alcohol consumption and binge drinking are concentrated among the highest levels of education, highest level of family income and occupations that are considered more prestigious,” says Columbia University epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, who authored the study.
And it’s possible that marriage and parenthood no longer act as sufficient buffers against excessive consumption. Much ink has been spilled over America’s #winemom phenomenon. Researchers suspected the yearslong proliferation of memes about moms drinking to numb their stress might be helping to drive a fundamental shift in the acceptability of drinking.
Unpacking why women are drinking more should shape public health experts’ strategy for reversing the trend. Certainly, the pervasive signals that drinking is part of being a successful, carefree person—those omnipresent “Life Laugh Wine” signs—don’t help. Neither does the sudden influx of beverages like hard seltzers and canned cocktails that seem tailored to women. The marketing push to sell women alcohol is eerily similar to the tobacco industry’s push of Virginia Slims—and the brand’s famous “You’ve come a long way, baby” slogan, which resulted in a marked rise in rates of smoking among women, says Dawn Sugarman, a research psychologist in the division of alcohol, drugs, and addiction at McLean Hospital.