We’re plague by self-doubt and wine helps wash it away

ThIS seems unlikely: here is the most educated group of women in our history, a health- conscious generation watching its weight, going to the gym and obsessing about probiotic yoghurt.

Yet this same group, says the OECD, sees a greater concentration of problem drinkers than their less successful sisters. And more than the rest of Europe.

The OECD blames the way the drinks industry cynically targets advertising at women and the fact that British society encourages boozing.

True, we do have hip, lady-friendly ads and sweetish slip- down- easy drinks. We do have wine bars on every corner, bright and friendly, unlike the gloomy, beery masculine pubs that, in my youth, were the only place to drink.

To be honest, I rather liked that dark, slummy feeling, but a lot of women found it oppressive and nipped off home early.

Now, however, we have bright, clean bars and happy hours and wine in ridiculously huge 250 ml glasses: that’s a third — a third! — of a bottle of wine (the French and Italians think we’re weird in that regard).

Moreover, the giggly Bridget Jones chardonnay- slurping legend has made the idea of women getting drunk quite often seem funny: not dangerous or unhealthy, but just cool and companionable on a good night out.

Get a couple of bottles in, have a laugh with your girlfriends, compare your dreadful days, let your hair down. What could be more bonding, a more sisterly and loving gesture, than holding your mate’s hair back while she throws up?

Even if it doesn’t go that far these days, it is no shame as a bright professional woman to report or tweet that you were ‘off your face’, could hardly get your key in the door, woke everyone falling over the dog (again! hilarious! TGIF!).

Chortle through your hangover that you seem to have put your phone in the fridge, eaten half a leftover treacle tart and woken up with pastry on the pillow.

It’s a hoot, it’s hilarious, it bonds you with others’ faux shameful stories. Indeed, some women admit they sneakily nurse a spritzer for hours in All Bar One with the girls, and then exchange shrieky hungover texts the next morning just to be part of the gang.

One theory about the prevalence of heavy drinking among educated, professional women, which will be put forward by those who believe this is the ‘dark side of equality’, is that because we get degrees, go out to work, get on and leave it for ages before finding a serious partner and having children, we have to fill in the time and assuage the crushing, manless loneliness by getting plas-

tered. That theory says that not having a man is such a fearful fate that the only answer is alcoholic oblivion. Possibly while caterwaul-ing All By Myself in karaoke bars with our gay best friends.

That chick-litty theory is clearly appealing to those who secretly wish that women would get back to the ironing board and cooker, stop taking up space and the jobs men used to do and refrain from doing ina-ppropriate and unladylike things such as becoming Home Secretary and telling off the Police Federa-tion. Harrumph!

I can’t buy that theory, though it may be true for a few women. Not least because plenty of single women are absolutely fine, don’t drink much, enjoy their jobs and are happy to wait for the right man - if any — while getting on with their interesting lives.

But also because some of the excessive drinking is certainly being done by those who have found partners and are being put under pressure by them and by the difficulty of juggling earning, children and unhelpful blokes. It was ever so.

Remember the old expression ‘Mother’s Ruin?’ That dates from an era when women did stay home as a matter of course and only the gin bottle or the 9am sherry after the children went to school gave them the Dutch courage to tackle the housework.

Just because they didn’t fall over in the street, it doesn’t mean there weren’t lifelong, miserable, trapped female alcoholics in the Fifties. So, let’s not get all nostalgic and talk down the modern woman.

But the findings are depressing all the same. Just because we can have a drink or two without causing a scandal it doesn’t mean we have to neck it until our livers cry out for mercy.

So, why is drink so important to this clever, lucky group of us?

There’s another unfeminist theory suggesting that once women move into traditionally male preserves and exercise authority, we adopt men’s habits. Poor little copycats.

In some trades, that’s true: you don’t want to be seen as a mumsy type or a prim little thing who scuttles home to her cat. So, you go to the City bar and shoot the breeze with the guys, catch the gossip, flirt a bit and relax among them more than you dared to do all day under the pressure of being sharp at work.

But since men, physically, have a slightly higher tolerance of heavy drinking than women, the race to keep up with the rounds does us no favours.

That’s one persuasive reason. But I think that there’s another, deeper and sadder force at work in all these situations.

Alcohol is warming, cheering and temporarily gives you courage. A first drink fogs the brain, wobbles the perceptions, relaxes the limbs, pushes harsh thoughts down. Its spreading vapour seems to fill a dark hole of uncertainty and shame inside you. And uncertainty and shame are a curse of female nature.

Men feel these things, too, but when a chap fails at a task, gets a hard time from his boss, feels patronised or muffs a promotion interview, he may find it easier to mutter: ‘Bastards!’ He can assume the attitude of a noble warrior-beast surrounded by enemies and lash out verbally ( ideally not physically, Clarkson . . .).

Women, on the other hand, like to keep the peace and so are fatally prone to internalise humiliation.

But where Mr Angry will probably get over the nasty feelings by (at least temporarily) placing all the blame on the tormentor, we females have a dreadful tendency to hug the dagger to our breasts. ‘Ohh . . . that’s right . . . I am useless. I deserved that. I feel rubbish!’ We lie awake tormented with self-doubt.

So, what makes things feel better? What is warming and encouraging, never judges you and gets you to sleep quick?

Often enough, it’s something in a glass. Have enough and, like Bridget Jones, you can slur “Bashtardsh!” with conviction and wash the doubt away.

The damage it does not seem to matter. Not at the time.