Abstract

From a gender-historical perspective, this article deals with the history of and discussions around an observed increase in female alcoholism. Since the 1950s, psychiatric, pedagogical and psychological discourses have lamented the increasing consumption of alcohol by women, and identified women’s emancipation as its cause. The article examines the male-dominated debates on female alcoholism up to 1968 and the emerging feminist counter-movement that followed. It analyzes the shifts in the social role of women as expressed in the discussions about ‘the drinking woman’ as well as simultaneous scientific-patriarchal counter-movements. On the one hand, the article shows how a classic concept of addiction is eroding due to the failure of medical treatment attempts and is being replaced by new psychosocial explanatory knowledge. On the other hand, it illustrates how women’s self-help is appropriating and reinterpreting this knowledge.