Question: if Mary, an otherwise successful woman, sometimes polishes off a whole bottle of white wine by herself, should Winifred, Emma and Agnes be kept from drinking? Unlike Mary, they are light drinkers, but like Mary, they are women, and who is to say what they might do if they were to get their hands on a bottle of Stiletto or Little Black Dress or Cupcake?
For epidemiologists, the question is one of risk. Since women are on average smaller than men, they are less able to absorb alcohol. If they are pregnant or nursing, the risk becomes still greater. This sounds reasonable—we can all accept that there are objective differences between men and women—but the practical result is to provide a new and seemingly scientific rationale for telling women they should drink little or no alcohol. Drinking is harmful not because it is unladylike but because it carries too many risks.
If epidemiologists were only interested in Mary, nobody could accuse them of...
Jessica Warner teaches the history of alcohol and other drugs at the University of Toronto’s Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Her most recent book is All or Nothing: A Short History of Abstinence in America (Emblem Editions, 2010).
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