Women and substance use: a feminist perspective

In Australia today, as in many other comparable societies, women's use of alcohol and other legal drugs is not circumscribed as it has been in the past. On the face of it, this suggests that there has been a major shift in social attitudes towards use of certain substances by women in line with changes to women's social position that occurred in the last few decades. Despite these changes, however, or perhaps because of them, women's use of alcohol and other drugs still attracts different attitudes and social responses when compared to similar behaviour in men. -- The objective of this research is to investigate the reasons why women's substance use behaviour is viewed differently from that of men's, how this has come about, why it is so culturally pervasive, and what are the effects for women. It has involved exploring how the meanings attached to women's use of certain chemical substances have been socially and historically constructed through scientific discourse, and how these meanings continue to be reproduced, reinforced and legitimated within other interlocking discourses. They are reflected too in cultural images as well as in popular attitudes, held by both women and men. -- The research has been undertaken using a 'woman-centred' approach, within the framework of feminist analysis. Such approach provides an alternative way of understanding women's experience with substance use.