Rethinking Gender within Alcohol and Drug Research

Gender has long been a central feature in research about users of drugs and alcohol, whether related to concerns about men and riotous bouts of drinking (Gutmann, 1996), research on women drug dealers (Maher & Hudson, 2007), or studies of women brewers in the 17th century (Clark, 1983). Much of the more contemporary research about gender and substance use has examined the extent to which male and female drinking practices differ and to what extent a convergence of drinking patterns is occurring. However, in spite of this long-standing interest, research on gender and drugs and alcohol has suffered from two tendencies. First, the dominant perspectives in the majority of alcohol and drug use(r) research in the USA, Europe, and Australia, until recently, have viewed alcohol and drug consumption primarily from a male point of view. The consumption of mind altering substances and the resulting intoxication have been viewed by researchers as being primarily an activity within the lives of men.1 Second, the available research on gender and substance use has been slow to take account of, or incorporate, the new theoretical developments that have arisen from gender studies in the social science and humanities disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, human/cultural geography, and criminology. Given this situation, in 2010 the editors of this special issue2 began planning a conference on gender and drug and alcohol research. This conference “Gender and Sexualities: Revisioning Drug and Alcohol Research” eventually took place in October 2012 at Aarhus University in Denmark.3 The aim of the conference, and subsequently the aim of this special issue, was and is to examine new developments within gender studies and explore their potential usefulness for socio-cultural research on gender and substance use. The conference attracted over 60 participants from Europe and North America and provoked a number of lively debates among the participants. Many of the attendees felt that not only had the conference been successful but that the proceedings should also be given a wider coverage. With this in mind, the organizers decided to produce a special journal issue to further publicize the papers and to provide the research community with a window on contemporary gender research in the field of alcohol and drug use(r) studies. So began a process of selecting papers to reflect the wide range of topics discussed at the conference. Obviously, we were unable to include all the conference papers within this issue and have had to make some difficult decisions about which papers to select and which to omit. We were also keen to include a number of disciplines within this special issue and have chosen papers written by sociologists, anthropologists, criminologists, cultural studies researchers, psychologists, and historians. Even though some of the conference papers have not been included, we believe that all the participants who attended the conference and presented papers have made an important contribution both to this issue and to the development of thinking and research in the area of gender studies and substance use. We have divided the nine selected papers into the following three sections: Producing, Selling, and Using Illicit Drugs: Accounting for Gender Gender, Dinking, and Intoxication Gender, Power, Deviance, and Drug Use In addition to including three papers in each section, we commissioned three commentaries to provide an overview of each section. These commentaries are intended not as critiques of the papers, although some may include critical comments, but instead are intended as a personal response to the issues raised in the papers in each section and an indication of the significance of these issues. Sections 1 and 3 emphasize the importance of utilizing the latest theoretical frameworks within the study of gender. These include developments in “doing gender” perspectives, and theories of intersectionality as well as the importance of examining issues of gendered power in both empirical analysis of drug users and within in the dominant theoretical perspectives that hold sway within the field of addiction studies. In Section 2, the papers examine the often under-researched area of women, intoxication, and pleasure and the extent to which these issues become the focus of “moral panics” (Cohen, 2002).