Why Women Drink
The longest study of problem drinking in women reveals that they get into trouble with alcohol for different reasons than men.
For the past 25 years, the study of alcoholism and problem drinking in women at the UND medical school has led the way to a deeper understanding of what causes these behaviors and their destructive effects.
In recent years, this research has moved on to the global stage. The work of Sharon Wilsnack, Ph.D., and Richard Wilsnack, Ph.D., professors of clinical neuroscience, Grand Forks, is well-respected internationally and has earned them a place at the forefront of leading authorities who are seeking to understand the kind of influences and life experiences that cause this type of behavior in women.
Sharon’s interest in this subject is rooted in her experience as a graduate student at Harvard University in the late ‘60s. The common thinking of that era was that women don’t drink or don’t get drunk, or if they do, “they do so for the same reasons” as men, Richard said. Very little research on women was being done at that time.
As faculty members at UND, in 1981, they began their studies, taking a sample of women’s lives by a survey.
“We were interested in drinking behavior and drinking-related problems,” Sharon said. They interviewed the same women every five years and added new cohorts of younger women every ten years.
The Wilsnacks analyze approximately 200 variables that may predict whether a woman will become a problem drinker, including family background, work experiences and victimization, and physical and emotional health. Their surveys, which have been conducted in five waves, once every five years, have yielded data from more than 1500 women.
Problem drinking in women is different from that in men, they have found, based on examination of factors that may influence drinking behavior. In general, women’s drinking behavior seems to be more influenced than men’s by their marriages and other close personal relationships – how satisfying the relationships are, whether there are sexual problems or violence in the relationship and whether their partner is a heavy or problem drinker.
They study personality traits, occupational and social roles, marital and family relationships, sexual and reproductive experiences, and life events as they affect drinking behaviors and alcohol-related problems.
“Of all the factors we’ve studied, the strongest predictor of women’s problem drinking is a history of sexual abuse,” Sharon said. “I think it’s a huge contributing factor in women’s drinking. If there’s something we could do as a society (to eliminate or reduce sexual abuse of children), we could go a long way toward preventing problem drinking, depression and suicide.”
Since 1993 the Wilsnacks have been increasingly called on to lend their expertise to studies of women’s drinking around the world.
They direct the GENACIS project (Gender, Alcohol, and Culture: An International Study), a worldwide study involving more than 40 countries, funded by the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the World Health Organization, and other sources. Unlike most other international studies, the GENACIS project includes a number of developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The topic of problem drinking in women “is becoming increasingly important,” they maintain, as women’s roles change and expand, and “internationally, the research is so valuable for learning how culture affects both women’s and men’s drinking behavior. There is, more and more, such an explosion of knowledge. If you don’t collaborate with researchers in other countries, you’re clearly missing out.”
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