Women gaining on men in terms of alcohol consumption

Women are catching up with men in terms of their alcohol consumption and its impact on their health, according to a study of international evidence which has been published in the online journal BMJ Open.

The trend, known as ‘sex convergence’, is most evident among young adults, the findings show.

Historically, men have been far more likely than women to drink alcohol and to drink it in quantities that damage their health, with some figures suggesting up to a 12-fold difference between the sexes.

However, now evidence is beginning to emerge that suggests this gap is narrowing.

In a bid to quantify this trend over time, the researchers pooled the data from 68 relevant international studies out of 314, all of which had been published between 1980 and 2014.

The studies included data collected between 1948 and 2014, representing people born in 1891, all the way up to 2000, and including a sample size of more than four million.

Men born between 1891 and 1910 were twice as likely as their female peers to drink alcohol. However, this had almost reached parity among those born between 1991 and 2000. The same patterns were evident for problematic use, where the gender gap fell from 3 to 1.2, and for associated harms, where the gender gap fell from 3.6 to 1.3. The gender gap fell by 3.2% with each successive five-year period of births, but was steepest among those born from 1966 onwards.

The calculation used was not designed to address if alcohol use is falling among men or rising among women, the researchers cautioned.

However, among the 42 studies that reported some evidence for sex convergence, most indicated that this was driven by greater use of alcohol among women, and 5% of the sex ratios were less than 1, suggesting women born after 1981 may actually be drinking more than their male peers, say the researchers.

While they did not set out to explain the reasons behind their observed findings, they emphasise their results “have implications for the framing and targeting of alcohol use prevention and intervention programmes.” And they conclude: “Alcohol use and alcohol use disorders have historically been viewed as a male phenomenon. The present study calls this assumption into question and suggests young women in particular should be the target of concerted efforts to reduce the impact of substance use and related harms.”