For my dissertation at LSE, I wrote about a UNICEF project for girl’s education and questioned its assumption that education was automatically empowering. A contact of mine currently at the LSE, Layla, has posted some very interesting research–conducted by the LSE, no less–that again brings these questions to my mind: Cleverest women are the heaviest drinkers
Those with degrees are almost twice as likely to drink daily, and they are also more likely to admit to having a drinking problem.
“Reasons for the positive association of education and drinking behaviours may include: a more intensive social life that encourages alcohol intake; a greater engagement into traditionally male spheres of life, a greater social acceptability of alcohol use and abuse; more exposure to alcohol use during formative years; and greater postponement of childbearing and its responsibilities among the better educated,” says the report.
The article doesn’t mention stress–and that alcohol happens to be society’s most acceptable and easiest available antidote. What would be helpful to look at is how women’s involvement in “traditionally male spheres of life” is inherently stressful; even more helpful would be examining methods to eliminate stress so that this kind of abuse need not happen.
Granted, this research is from the UK with notoriously high rates of alcohol consumption. But still, it’s quite tragic to think that the most educated and qualified women are wasting their potential by getting sloshed.
Is it because they cannot handle the pressure of being in such high positions in society and conforming to roles with which they are not comfortable? Is inebriation a more empowering alternative?
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