Research project Drinking, gender differences and social change
In the last decades women have increasingly moved to the labor market, expanded their traditional identities, and increased their alcohol consumption. Gender differences in alcohol use is a powerful indicator of how a given culture and era distinguishes between male and female identities.
Illustration: a7880s/Mostphotos
A deeper understanding of the drinking culture, its gender-specificity and the social processes involved, requires, in turn, a study of the situations in which people drink. The drinking situation influences the opinions about the appropriateness of drinking, drinkers and behavior while drinking. Moreover, it affects the amount of alcohol people drink, the behavior while drinking, the adverse and beneficial effects of drinking, and the control of these. In Sweden we know little about drinking situations and their gendered character. Quantitative studies on changes in the Swedish alcohol culture have usually considered changes in yearly volume of consumption, beverage preferences, frequency of drinking occasions and frequency of intoxication occasions.
This project aims at to analyse what kinds of gendered differences and similarities there are in the main drinking situations in Sweden and explores how these differences and similarities have developed. It uses data that covers a time-period from the 1960s to the 2000s and combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to study the drinking situations from different angles, thereby obtaining multifaceted information and a better understanding of how social processes affect drinking situations, as well as their gendered practices and changes. Furthermore, the project specifies the characteristics of Swedish drinking situations in comparison to Finnish and Italian drinking situations.
The study will increase the understanding of the social and cultural dynamics of the Swedish drinking situations and their changes. This kind of knowledge is much needed when developing effective situation-based local prevention campaigns and programs.