Women are drinking more and more as gap with men narrows: study

It’s Ladies Night — more than you may have realized.

More women are knocking back alcohol — and doing it more often — even as men are drinking less and more rarely, according to a new survey.

 

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism study

, which crunched data from 2002-12, showed that the percentage of women who consumed booze in the past 30 days went from 45% to 48% at the same time as male consumers went from 57.4% to 56%.

 

And women consumed alcohol more frequently — from 6.8 days a month to 7.3 days on average. Men still lead in that category — with males drinking on 9.5 days per month, down from 9.9 — but the “differences between men and women are diminishing," said Aaron White of the alcohol institute.

That’s a sober assessment. Jezebel, the gushy women’s website, summed it up differently: “Proof that feminism is working,” the site crowed. “Women now consume almost as much alcohol as men.”

The headline misstated a key fact, though. When it comes to overall consumption, males are still the Big Men on Campus: Men consume roughly 18 liters of booze per year, compared to just 7.8 liters by women.

Researchers aren’t sure what factors are closing the glug gap, the study continued.

“Reasons for converging patterns of alcohol use are unclear and do not appear to be easily explainable by recent trends in employment status, pregnancy status, or marital status,” the study said.

With Gersh Kuntzman