The history of alcohol can be aligned synonymously with the history and control over women excluding them from the public sphere. Starting with Ancient Greek and Roman times, and then moving to the Middle Ages and the two world wars, I examine how different countries attempted to remove women from spaces where men drank and socialized, to the ways they were removed from the production of alcohol with the rise of mass production after industrialization. It is through this examination that I enable a better understanding of larger history of alcohol, and how its production and sociality can be linked to the historical oppression of women.
Ancient Greek and Roman cultures had some of the first recorded accounts of alcohol being used in a social …show more content…
Alewives and brewsters were women who brewed alcohol in their households, usually in rural areas. Most of these women were married, and did the work by themselves. However, it was during the 1400s to the 1500s that there was a shift in production, for how alcohol was being made, to who it was being made by. After the the Black Death, commercial brewing became a popular means of creating alcohol in a more demanding urban market. Among other things, they also demanded food and drink, but what they all had in common was that it was now being produced by men. Smaller breweries were being upscaled by higher end commercial breweries, and the commercial authorities excluded women from all of these places. Thus, what began to take place was a newly formed culture of misogyny, former alewives and brewsters were portrayed with negative traits, such as being dishonest, immoral, and unhygienic. While these images remained, new forms of alcohol began to arise which meant that in some places women were still the main …show more content…
In the United States, it was a policy that started in 1920 until 1933 that banned the production and sale of beverage alcohol throughout the country. The temperance movement saw banning alcohol as a solution the nation’s poverty, crime, illness and war. However, as this was taking place, public drinking became a popular resolution. Secret bars became to form around the country, and especially in New York City. In the 1930s, New York City had thousands of speakeasies, which were small basement bars. Constantly threatened by being raided by the policy under Prohibition, speakeasies brought in many middle class men from the war while they were served cocktails and entertained by bands and singers. However, women were also welcome to these speakeasies. During the nineteenth century in America, women drank in private spaces as they were excluded from saloons and other bars. It gave the illusion that men were the only ones who drank, though women had been drinking in their homes for a long time. Speakeasies were some of the first public drinking spaces in America that women were welcomed into. There, they were not regarded as immoral even though the existence of speakeasies and drinking alcohol was illegal at the time. Empowering women by letting them drink in public spaces continued into the Second World War. It became more and more common for women to be found in bars, especially when the men left for war. Much