For several years now, I have been working in pubs and restaurants. I have, in this time, handed drinks to hundreds, if not thousands, of heterosexual couples, and can almost always predict which drink to give to each person, solely along the lines of gender. There is a very strong and very weird correlation between gender and alcoholic drink preferences. Mixed drinks, especially cocktails and gins and tonics, are ordered almost exclusively by women, with wine also a predominantly female choice. The vast majority of ale, at least where I have worked, is drunk by men. Lager too is more often the pick of men, though many women order it too, especially in half pint measures.
This difference is bizarre. I find it truly baffling, and really struggle to come up with a full and convincing explanation for why it exists. Perhaps the reason is that beer contains more liquid and more calories than wine or mixed drinks, which, within the context of a patriarchal culture obsessed with women's weight, puts potential female beer drinkers off it. Maybe it is that the marketing of the different kinds of drinks, as well as the actual drinks themselves, align somewhat with gender ideals. The nebulous, vague and often incoherent concepts of femininity and masculinity do correspond respectively to an extent with sweet, fruity, colourful drinks and more savoury and plain looking ones. A third potential explanation, and the one I find most interesting, is that these gendered cultural drinking patterns are a byproduct of the differing spaces in which the two genders typically drank in bygone ages.
Pubs were once extremely male dominated spaces. Men would, after a day at work, retire to their local to relax and socialise over a pint or two. Women, who by and large were excluded from the professional workforce, and who were often occupied by domestic labour, did not engage in this type of social interaction and thus this type of drinking. The drinks that are typically preferred by women are those that are suited to the domestic sphere that patriarchal society attempts to limit women to. A glass of rosé, or a gin and tonic, are poured no better by the average bartender than they are by anyone, and can easily be made at home. They are, relative to pints of beer, small in volume, making them ideal for leaving on the countertop and taking the occasional sip whilst doing something else, perhaps cooking or washing up.
Beer is in many ways the opposite, a drink designed for social situations. During a long chat that leaves your mouth dry, being able to sip from a relatively large glass of a relatively weaker drink will allow you to carry on enjoying the conversation. Whilst cans and bottles have their place, any beer fan will tell you that the best stuff is on tap. Whether cask or keg, the best pint is a draught one from a pub. Pubs are, in their very nature, designed for beer drinking, with complicated systems of taps connected to barrels in their cellars. In stark contrast, wine, spirits and mixers need only a fridge and a few shelves. Leaving aside the atmosphere, the person whose drinking experience is going to be most improved by it taking place in a pub is the beer drinker, whereas someone drinking wine or a mixed drink may as well have stayed at home, meaning that men are probably more likely to enjoy spending time in pubs than women are.
This is a problem! Pubs are a massive pillar of English, and more broadly British, national identity, and (I believe that) full enjoyment of a pub is only attainable through drinking something that the establishment is designed for and that you will only get there: draught beer (or at a push, cider). Whatever the specific cause, the differences in socialisation, habits, and expectations that result in women not ordering beer in pubs lock women out of a very important element of our culture. This is unacceptable.
I love drinking beer. I also love drinking wine, gin and tonics, and fruity cocktails. Each of these drinks have occasions to which they are best suited. I have chosen to focus here on women being excluded from fully enjoying pubs by not drinking beer, but in much the same way, men are excluded from various other experiences by their drinks preferences. Limiting our drink choices is very low down on the list of gender’s crimes, but it does deserve to be on the list. We owe it to ourselves to widen our alcoholic horizons, to drink what we actually enjoy, not just what we feel we ought to.
