Professional women 'more likely to be heavy drinkers than those in other jobs'

Professional women 'more likely to be heavy drinkers than those in other jobs'. Professional women are more likely to be heavy drinkers than those in other jobs, experts have warned.

Women in managerial and professional occupations were more likely to drink too much and too often, indulging at least once a week, they found.

Researchers warn that as ‘ladette’ culture is on the wane there should be a new focus on career women, in particular those who drink large amounts at home.

Doctors are increasingly concerned about professional women who drink too much alcohol, especially wine.

Higher strength wines and larger glasses in recent years mean that many underestimate their alcohol intake, they warn.

Drink related deaths among women have doubled in the last 16 years, official figures show, while cases of cirrhosis of the liver are starting to seen in women in their twenties, unheard of just a few decades ago.

The new warning comes on the busiest night of the year for Christmas parties, when millions are predicted to overindulge across the country.

The research analysed evidence of women’s drinking patterns in Britain and Denmark.

While there has been a fall in binge drinking in pubs and clubs, other forms of drinking are on the increase, they warn.

These include professional women drinking large amounts at home, from a young age until well into their middle years,

The review of research also found that women who work full-time were also more likely to drink heavily and binge on alcohol than those with part-time jobs.

The more they earned the more likely women were to drink frequently.

Single women were also more likely to drink heavily than those in relationships.

Dr Fiona Measham, from Lancaster University, one of the co-authors of the report, said: “Young women’s drinking has been a focus of concern during the last decade.

“Yet whilst national figures suggest that young women's binge drinking may be falling, these changes have not been generally acknowledged in recent years.

“Previously the debate on problem drinking has very much focussed on the public spectacle of the young woman binge drinking – the work-hard play-hard ‘ladette’ stumbling round city centres with clothes askew, the doubly deviant figure of drunkenness in a dress.

“Current alcohol trends challenge some of these enduring stereotypes of problem drinking and lead us to question why we are so eager to demonise young people yet so reluctant to recognise that drinking trends can go down as well as up.

“This research, for example, highlights the ‘hidden harms’ of increasingly frequent drinking in the home by professional women from early adulthood into middle age.”

The findings were published in the journal Probation Journal.

Earlier this year a study warned that female office juniors, who did typical jobs such as photocopying, delivering mail and data entry, were almost twice as likely to die from drinking too much than the rest of the population. ( telegraph.co.uk )