Health, risk, and pleasure: The formation of gendered discourses on women's alcohol consumption

Abstract

Based on a summary and discussion of our previous studies of media portrayals of gender and alcohol in relation to the general, societal discourses of risk and pleasure, we aim to develop the gender theoretical understanding of alcohol as a health issue. We argue that even though the media provide various implicit or explicit instructions for women on how to act, both warnings and encouragements to drink are framed within basic gendered assumptions that concern women's dealing with alcohol. Because of this, the discourses that construct women's drinking as either risky or pleasurable are in fact not separate, but rather two sides of the same coin. Drawing on this analysis, we argue that much of the research on alcohol consumption and sex difference – and in particular on women's drinking – lacks in its understanding of the gendered ideas and assumptions that frame and influence these practices.