Women were the first brewers, yet the history of alcohol comes with a double shot of sexism

There aren't any books about women and drinking. It's really, really serious?

I was texting my best friend to complain after I finished reading another cocktail history book. She introduced me to craft drinks. I was fascinated after years of being too intimidated to ask a bartender for something more interesting than a drink. For the first time in my life, I started to think more about alcohol after I tasted the cocktail. I wanted to go to more bars and try more drinks.

I would like to read about anything that interests me. I was introduced to the science and history of cocktails and drinking by visiting the bookshop. I didn't stop to think about how important alcohol is. I was surprised to learn that the history of drinking is an amalgam of many different disciplines. World leaders have been aided by alcohol. It has contributed to the creation of national identities. Alcohol has made a difference in the world. I was interested in everything.

I was not happy. The books I brought home were written by men. If there was any women's history mentioned, it was usually a few scattered sentences. I sent my best friend a text asking for some book recommendations. I might have been buying the wrong ones. She said I couldn't buy the books I was looking for. The history of women and drinking wasn't written by anyone.

There were a lot of questions. I was curious about what women drank through the ages and how they were involved in alcohol production. I thought about what I knew about women and drinking. I hadn't noticed how much gendered our drinking culture is. The drinks themselves are categorized into two categories: "OK for men" and "OK for women" I wanted to know if drinking had always been this way. Is there always a girl's drink? Who made the decision that drinking was a gendered activity? When did certain types of alcohol start to be respected? This happened in the world. This happened, why? What happened to this thing?

Humans have been drinking for a long time. We started condemning certain types of booze with a pink ribbon. It's a bad idea to mark a drink as feminine.

Creating a distinction about ‘girly’ drinks is all about male control

All drinks are feminine drinks. Women have been drinking since alcohol was invented, but they have been making and serving it for a long time. I assumed that the idea of a girly drink was a modern invention when things like strawberry daiquiris and appletinis were added to the cocktail menu. The drinks are older than paper money, indoor toilets, and the printing press.

Control was involved in creating a distinction between manly drinks and girly drinks. Men in power had access to alcohol. The ancient Roman women were allowed just a taste of the wine that the men drank, called passum, which was a sweeter version of the wine. The gendered drinks started.

Beer was the world's first beermaker and was made by women. Beer began as a feminine craft. The world's first alcohol-ruling deities were women. The goddess of beer was worshiped by the brewing priestesses and they would quaff beer to celebrate her. She was thought to have a buzz after a few drinks. Every year at the beginning of the flooding of the Nile River, a festival called the Drunkenness of Hathor was held.

A cave carving that depicts a nude woman holding a drinking horn is the earliest depiction of a person. She is known as the Venus of Laussel because she is on a cliff. Some historians think that it is a musical instrument that the woman is holding wrong. Imagine if someone took the time to make a picture of the world's worst hornblower into the side of a cliff, because you believe women aren't drinkers.

Since the creation of alcohol, there have been female drinkers in every part of the world. Women have always been one step ahead of men. Every era of alcohol and drinking culture has been influenced by their inventions. Without women, the world wouldn't have a drinking culture like it does today. Their contributions are not marginal even though they have been marginalized in the history of alcohol.

Hildegard of Bingen was the first person to research the effects of hops on beer. Her writing helped popularise the practice, which was the biggest innovation in beer technology since the invention of brew. Beer spoiled too quickly to be exported before hops were added. Beer could become one of the most profitable products in the world after commercialising it.

The Widow Clicquot was responsible for internationalising the champagne market in the 19th century. Some of the most successful whiskey distilleries in Ireland include brands such as Bushmills. Scottish and Irish women were in demand as mail order brides in the US.

The long counter for serving drinks was invented in the 1700s to serve female customers. The taverns were for men who like to sit and drink. The dram shops were more female-centered and did not have the masculine tradition associated with them. Working women didn't have time to sit at a table and drink their gin, so gin shops began installing counters where a busy factory worker, housewife or maid could walk up and quickly down a dram. The design has become a staple of drinking establishments around the world.

The culture of drinking has been shaped by the influence of women. The Don the Beachcomber restaurant was founded by businesswoman,Sunny Sund, who created an empire out of her restaurants. If you have ever sipped on a zombie or a Mai tai in a bar covered in bamboo and tropical flowers, you owe it toSunny. The mania for single malt Scotches and Islay Scotches began in the 1960s, thanks to the work of the Laphroaig distillery's owner. The world thought that blended Scotches were too strong to be sipped on straight. One of the greatest poets of all time was a woman named Li Qingzhao, who wrote about drinking wine. The feelings and experiences of women were showcased in the wine poems.

In society, a drinking woman is an uninhibited woman

The correlation between a culture that allowed women to drink and a culture that gave women their freedom is hard to ignore. The patriarchal cultures have been afraid of a drinking woman for a long time. The biggest role in a culture's drinking habits is patriarchal oppression. The double standard that drinking women face is based on male fears of control.

Women have been told that alcohol makes them immoral since the days of Mesopotamia. Do you think it's dangerous? It is dangerous to their husband's or father's estates. If a woman got drunk and had a fling that resulted in the loss of her virginity or the conception of a child, that was a huge blow to the man who was controlling her. The creation of gendered drinking culture was due to a male fear.

All you have to do is look into the bottom of a glass to know how a society treats women. It has been gratifying to see the long-awaited push to get more representation for women in all industries. Women have been in the alcohol industry for a long time. If not quite getting paid as much as they should, they are being hired. I can't imagine a time without them.

You can toast if you know that women had a part in it. Women can see a brewery, a vineyard, a distillery, a bar and know that they are just as important as anyone else.

The book Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol is available for sale. You can buy a copy from guardian bookshop.com.