‘What a man can do, a woman can do better’: gendered alcohol consumption and (de)construction of social identity among young Nigerians

Understanding hegemonic masculinity

Hegemonic masculinity (henceforth referred to as HM) has been a concept widely employed by gender scholars to describe the subordination of women through specific strategies [10]. Demetriou [11] suggests that there are two common types of hegemony: internal and external. External hegemony occurs in patriarchal societies where men’s dominance over women is institutionalized. In these societies, men’s higher social status positions them to have material benefits or ‘patriarchal dividends’ (p2) [12]. Internal hegemony occurs when a category of men maintain a higher social status than other men, thereby establishing the subordination and marginalization of the lower status men. HM needs only a minority of men to police the majority, excluding those categorized under ‘subordinate masculinity’ and women (p832) [10].

Every society has specific behavioural patterns that are categorized as either masculine or feminine and this is often borne out of consensus [4]. Because such behaviours are not inherently biological, individual members of such societies acquire these behavioural patterns through the socialization process. This suggests that gender is not fixed but fluid because ‘gender behaviour is accomplished in the presence of onlookers’ (p742) [4], who categorise such behaviour as masculine or feminine. Given that the formation of hegemonic masculinities is contextual and because social situations change, HM can be altered [10]. Indeed, research has shown that individuals may construct masculinity differently in particular contexts, thereby suggesting that there are multiple masculinities [4,10].

According to Connell and Messerschmidt [10], gender relations are borne out of history. Therefore, there is the possibility that hierarchies of gender can change. Humans construct gender through their day-to-day interactions with others [13] and these contextual interactions may necessitate pluralistic masculinities [10]. Thus, through the resistance of, or challenge to patriarchy by women or men that are subordinated by other men, HM becomes subject to change [10]. It has been argued that HM confers benefits to men over women. An example of one such benefit is the different perceptions afforded to the consumption of alcohol by men versus women, where men’s use is less stigmatized than that of women.

Doing gender with alcohol

A growing body of literature suggests that there is a relationship between alcohol consumption and gender. In fact, the existence of gender differences in alcohol consumption documented in every part of the world suggests that it may be regarded as ‘one of few universal gender differences’ (p1763) [14]. For example, internationally, research shows that young men consume alcohol more frequently than young women [15,16]. Other studies suggest that in many societies, social drinking symbolises masculinity and abstinence connotes weakness [17]. While men often go out to places such as pubs, bars, and so forth with the intention of drinking and to become intoxicated, this is not the case among most women, especially older ones [17]. Given that alcohol consumption is one of the patriarchal benefits available to men, they have greater access to drinking spaces. As such, men have more opportunities for frequent and heavier alcohol consumption than those that are available to women. Another factor that facilitates alcohol misuse amongst men is the association of masculinity with man’s ability to “hold his drink” (i.e., drink but not appear intoxicated) and wider acceptance of men’s inebriation [14].

Although in most societies it is culturally expected for males to drink, studies suggest that a contributing factor to high rates of alcohol consumption (or heavy consumption) amongst men is the interconnection between drinking and other traits associated with the male sex role, such as aggression and risk-taking [18]. Many of the activities in which men engage predispose them to drinking, such as socializing in bars, partaking in sporting activities, and playing drinking games [19]. Alcohol consumption is thought to increase in these contexts because it forms the basis upon which a man’s masculinity is evaluated by other men [4]. Further, gender does not just determine how people use substances such as alcohol, consumption of alcohol and other drugs can be used to do gender [20,21]. That is, alcohol consumption is used to fulfil gender roles and expectations [22].

Among young people, studies have revealed a variety of motives underlying drinking behaviours, such as self-enhancement, [23] and the expression of masculinity [24,25] and femininity [26]. Similarly, studies conducted among student populations revealed that female [5,27] and male students [4,28] use alcohol heavily and scholars argued that alcohol consumption is one way students express masculinity on campus [4,28,29]. Although alcohol consumption is one of the ways people do gender, how, when and where this is done differs amongst different groups. For example, while some individuals may use heavy consumption to distinguish their drinking (and themselves) from other groups [4], others may employ measures to regulate their drinking in order to not exceed limits that act as markers of gender identity [21].

Despite that the enactment of hegemonic masculinities may confer presumed advantage to the victor (men), it does not come without a cost [30]. This is because physical and emotional damage can result [10]. In terms of alcohol consumption, a number of studies have shown that although doing gender with heavy episodic drinking may give ‘liquid courage’ (p747) [4] to the drinker, it often results in physical, emotional, health and social problems [28,31-33]. Despite that the use of heavy alcohol consumption to construct gender identity has dire consequences, it is surprising that in some countries, females are said to be constructing gender identity with heavy alcohol use in contemporary society.

Feminization of heavy alcohol use

The literature suggests that women who drink in places where their drinking is socially taboo are seen as unfeminine [18], feckless [34] or as guilty of having transgressed femininity [35]. A reason behind the tensions surrounding women’s drinking or excessive use of alcohol is the belief that such behaviour does not affect her alone. Instead, a woman’s problems with alcohol are thought to affect her children, the family, and society at large, and therefore, her use of alcohol prompts an outcry [14]. Different studies [36-38] have provided biological explanations on the effects of alcohol on the human body, stating that females are more vulnerable [39], but this appears to be over exaggerated or ‘magnified by cultural norms for how women and men should or should not use alcohol’ (p742) [4].

Although evidence shows that men continue to dominate drinking spaces [40] and consume greater quantities of alcohol [41,42], research suggested that females now binge and engage in other forms of heavy drinking rituals [5]. The erosion of traditional value systems that hitherto hindered women from drinking [43] and the ‘feminisation of night-time economy’ (p188) [26] are thought to be reasons underlying these changes. Other reasons include the quest for self-expression [44] and the increase in females’ employment, which results in women spending less time at home [14]. Other researchers have argued that females are not just venturing into areas previously dominated by males (such as drinking games and other public drinking spaces), they are now drinking what was previously tagged as being ‘males’ alcohol’ such as spirits [45].

In countries where women’s alcohol consumption is growing (such as Finland), [46] studies have shown gender convergence in alcohol consumption patterns. According to Bloomfield et al. [46], factors responsible for this include the increase in females’ socioeconomic status and the increased advocacy for female emancipation. Women are challenging patriarchal beliefs about gendered alcohol consumption [26] such as those inherent in drinking discourses that are centred on ‘risk, responsibility and appropriate behaviours when drinking’ (p4) [35], particularly within public spaces. It has also been reported that while young men engage in substance use as a way of doing gender, substance use among their female counterparts is a source of gaining cultural capital [47].

These remarkable changes in consumption patterns amongst women have prompted increased scholarly attention, particularly in Western countries. In the USA for example, Lemle and Mishkind [18] view the upsurge of female emancipation in the 1970s as responsible for this shift because it brought about a relaxation of the stringent ways of defining male and female sex behaviours. In Australia, Palmer [35] suggested that drinking practices are some of the legitimate means through which females express their identities as sports followers and supporters. It is also argued that females may not drink less or abstain because they have been one of the major targets of alcohol producers [14]. Because researchers have neglected the fact that women in many countries are now drinking in spaces considered to have been hitherto occupied by men (such as in bars, pubs and sports venues), their drinking problems appear to have continued to be underestimated. This underestimation may hinder proffering of holistic solutions. Thus, Palmer (p9) [35] advised that the concept of HM (where it is assumed that only men drink heavily) should be rethought. She argued instead, that ‘hegemonic drinking’ (i.e., the use of heavy drinking amongst men and women to construct gender identity) should replace the former.

Alcohol and the Nigerian society

It is thought that the perception of the role of alcohol in a society is related to that society’s specific inherent normative structure. How each society perceives alcohol determines what it is used for, who drinks it, and how it should be consumed [48]. While some societies may see alcohol as ‘part of sociability’, others may see it as ‘a special product to be controlled’ or even as a ‘moral threat’ (p1766) [14]. Nigeria is a patriarchal society in which women most commonly experience subordination and marginalization. One of the ways patriarchal relations manifest is in the male presumption of their right to consume alcohol. Alcohol consumption may be seen as a means available to men to display their discrimination against women and negate women’s position in the social relations.

In traditional Nigerian society, locally-produced alcoholic beverages such as palm wine (sap from palm trees or raffia palm), burukutu and pito (fermented from Sorghum or maize) served complex roles in social rituals such as the opening and closing of family meetings, ancestral worship, and the consummation of marriage, amongst others. Adult males were expected to drink at such occasions and their failure to do so would be responded to with suspicion [49]. However, outright hedonistic consumption was considered taboo in many communities [50] and alcohol consumption among young people was culturally restrained [51]. The weight of taboo against women’s alcohol use has been so significant that marginalization and stigmatization of a woman drinker extends beyond herself to include her family. For example, if a woman is thought to consume heavily or inappropriately, her sisters’ chances of attracting a suitor will be greatly hampered [52].

In contemporary Nigeria, available quantitative studies reveal that many young men are drinking hazardously and are using other substances [53,54]. Among their female counterparts, a few studies [55,56] have identified different patterns of alcohol use. Obot [57] attributes the rise in women’s consumption to pervasive alcohol marketing that targets women with female-friendly beverages. However, this does not address motivations for drinking among women– an issue unexplored until this current study. Again, while a plethora of studies on alcohol and gender construction among students in Western countries exists, a scan of the literature suggests that none have been conducted in Nigeria. More specifically, no study was identified that employed qualitative methodology to explore gender construction, alcohol use and perceptions of use amongst student populations in Nigeria. These gaps suggest that there is a pressing need to empirically examine what motivates young people in Nigeria to drink alcohol and to use alcohol to (de)construct gender identity.

Procedure and ethical approval

The study was conducted in a university campus located in a metropolitan city of Anambra State, south-eastern Nigeria. Prior to data collection, ethical approval was awarded by the Office of the Dean of Students’ Affairs of the Nigerian university and the Brunel University London Ethics Board. The Office of the Dean of Students’ Affairs of the university in Nigeria was responsible for reviewing and approving studies concerning students at the time the ethical approval was awarded in 2012. Data were collected between September and December 2013. The participants were recruited across the nine faculties in the university campus using word-of-month and snowballing techniques. It should be noted that these recruitment processes were adopted as alcohol consumption among young people is a sensitive topic in Nigeria and as such, young people, especially females, are not easily recruited for such studies because of their fear of identification. In order to protect their confidentiality, all names used here are not the participants’ real names. Additionally, in accordance with BioMed Central editorial policies for reporting qualitative studies, the author confirms that this article has adhered to the RATS guidelines.

Participants and interviews

Thirty-one open-ended interviews lasting approximately 33–90 minutes were conducted with 22 male and 9 female undergraduate students, aged 19–23 years. Although eliciting more data from females would have provided greater nuance, some recruitment difficulties hindered the inclusion of more women. A significant barrier to the recruitment of more women was the greater stigmatization of female drinkers, even though alcohol consumption by young males and females is socio-culturally disapproved in Nigeria. As such, some potential female participants that were approached during the fieldwork declined the invitation to participate. The interviews were recorded with a digital device with the permission of participants. All but one of the participants is from Igbo tribe (an ethnic group that lives in the region where the study was conducted). Participants were invited to select the location of the interview. While four of the interviews were conducted on the school campus, 27 (87%) were conducted in participants’ off-campus hostels. In order to ensure voluntary participation, no incentive was given to the participants.

After testing the interview protocol in a pilot study, an interview schedule was developed. It consisted of 12 main questions that were expanded through probes during the interviews. Each interview began with an effort to establish rapport and obtaining demographic information. The questions that followed sought to elicit from them their perceptions and beliefs about alcohol and the meaning it holds for them. Participants were also asked about the quantity of alcohol consumed, the frequency and locations of consumption, and with whom they most frequently drink alcohol. Additional questions explored the participants’ perspectives on students who abstain or drink little alcohol, and what they consider to be “normal” consumption for males and for females at a drinking occasion. Determining amounts consumed was challenging given that Nigeria does not have alcohol policies in which a standardized drink is defined [58]. Instead, participants were asked about the number of bottles or glasses of alcohol they consumed.

Data analysis

The interviews were transcribed verbatim and a thematic analysis was undertaken [59]. As recommended by Silverman [60], preliminary analysis was initiated immediately after the first interview was conducted in order to guarantee quality and timely analysis. Field notes and audio recordings were reviewed to check for accuracy and to identify additional areas to explore further in subsequent interviews. Tentative coding schemes were developed at this early stage [59]. Following this, the first interview was transcribed and anonymised, and initial extracts were categorized into broad themes and subthemes. This process was repeated for the next six interviews. A collaborative approach to analysis was undertaken in which the study’s team of academic supervisors reviewed and commented on selected interviews and the initial thoughts and ideas about coding and themes. This turned out to be very useful, in that it assisted me to have an early grasp of my data [61] and some of these subthemes grouped manually became the parent nodes while others were condensed [62] into different child nodes that formed the thematic coding framework when the data were imported into Nvivo 10. When the 31 interviews were completed and transcribed, the author completed the thematic analysis.

Women’s motivations: drinking for pleasure and sociability

Men’s motivations: courage and machismo

Additionally, Boniface’s words shed light on the way in which men are admired by both male and female party attendees when they perform this male gender appropriate behaviour (i.e., by publicly displaying their superior masculinity in game playing). The resultant fame or popularity achieved facilitates flirtation and sexual encounters, and as such, appears to be a strong motivation for participating in drinking games.

These findings shed light on some of the reasons for participating in (or for women, reasons for refraining from participating in) drinking games. Although the results of drinking games provide social capital for sexual negotiation and manipulation, they also contribute to the popularity of hazardous drinking among students. In turn, this supports the claim that practices of HM do not always result in what is in one’s best interest in terms of one’s health. Thus, it suggests that health is a secondary concern to HM, in that the very notions of HM impede men’s interests in caring for their health, (i.e., masculinity and health-promoting behaviours are in tension) [11].

Strong men and fragile women: alcohol as markers of masculine identity

From this excerpt, it is clear that this student drew upon socio-cultural beliefs about the role of women and their place in the Nigerian society to explain his reasoning behind his ideas about women’s consumption of alcohol. In general, representatives of the formal social structure in contemporary Nigeria (such as the police) would not respond negatively to women’s consumption of alcohol, provided that they did not violate any laws related to alcohol such as the legal drinking age. However, the informal responses to their drinking strongly discourage women from using alcohol [63]. These different reactions to women’s use of alcohol work to position women who do drink as those who engage in ‘non-traditional gender practices’ p.377 [64]. As such, these contradictory reactions can exacerbate social inequality by expanding gender hierarchies, which further disadvantage women.

In the excerpts above, it can be inferred that male participants believe that alcohol should be consumed by men. Further, they justify their beliefs using moral arguments and advance the idea of ‘being strong’ to support their acquisition of patriarchal dividend in the form of alcohol consumption.

Alcohol does not discriminate according to gender

As mentioned above, six of the females participants believe that it is acceptable for men to drink alcohol but not for women. Further, it appears that their beliefs are mediated by cultural notions that women who drink are ‘wild girls’ and ‘unfeminine’. Three other female participants expressed beliefs that suggest that alcohol does not discriminate according to gender, and so it does not matter if it is a woman or a man consuming it. To them, it only matters if someone is ‘strong enough’ to take it. For example, Patience emphasized that the issue is not gender, but strength or capacity to consume that is relevant to the appropriate consumption of alcohol (i.e., appropriate consumption is limited to a level at which one does not become inebriated).

Indeed, Pretty sheds light on how she developed a capacity to “hold her drink”, by revealing that she has always challenged men in diverse activities even before she gained admission into the university. Interestingly, although she uses heavy drinking to do gender and to challenge gender norms and expand categories of what is acceptable behaviour for women, she also strives to maintain her personal respect and integrity among peers in order to avoid being categorised among ‘bad women’ (p396) [63]. To accomplish this precarious position, she must strategically manager her consumption so that she does not become intoxicated, or at least not display signs of intoxication.

In fact, from her account, it appears that this ability to hold her drink increases her rank among her peers, whom she described as those who often show signs of intoxication after consuming fewer bottles than she does.

As HM is often contested as children grow up, individuals have the ‘capacity to deconstruct gender binaries and criticise HM’ (p853) [10]. As these excerpts reveal, this can be said to be what young people, especially the females, are doing with alcohol consumption in contemporary Nigeria. Despite that, unlike what was found among American female students who use heavy drinking as an opportunity to violate the boundaries of traditional gender norms and excuse their behaviour by blaming alcohol [64], Chichi and other women who use heavy drinking to do gender do not want to lose control as a result of alcohol; thus they continued to discourage being “out of control”.

Gendering of alcoholic beverages

A different picture was painted by a few males who believed that it is acceptable for women to drink. However, although they felt it was okay for women to consume alcohol, they stressed that there are only certain types of alcoholic beverages that are appropriate for women. In general, beer was not considered to be appropriate for women, except for when taken medicinally (e.g., stout that is thought to ease menstrual pain in Nigeria). Beer was described as causing men’s stomachs to protrude, a side effect that would be unbecoming for women, thereby making beer inappropriate for women to drink. Although spirits were not considered to be a woman’s drink, one of the male participants argued that they were preferable to beer because spirits would help women maintain their “twiggy” figure. By and large, the alcoholic beverages deemed appropriate for women were those perceived as sweetened or “light” such as wine or Smirnoff Ice. In fact, the men added that such beverages shouldn’t even be considered as alcohol due to their sweet tastes and presumed very low ABV.

She added that she does not support the dominant view that females should only drink sweetened alcohol. Instead, she expressed her opinion that women should be allowed to drink whatever they want, whether it is bitter or sweetened.

As these accounts suggest, some women consume beverages that are gendered as women's drinks, however some of them (and other men) are unaware that these drinks tend to have a high ABV. The extracts also show that females are beginning to contest these patriarchal drinking practices, and there is a growing consciousness that irrespective of one’s gender, individuals should be allowed to choose the type of alcoholic beverages they want to drink. Again, as it has been exemplified above, alcohol consumption may appear to be lower among women, especially in societies where their drinking is restrained or totally stigmatized [66], but such restriction may open doors for different types of alcohol-related problems. In the Nigerian case, females may be drinking more potent alcohol with high sugar content than men presume and this they have no control over because the society sees sweetened alcoholic drinks as a woman’s beverage.