Women's Anger at the WHO’s Global Action Plan & What It Means
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When the early draft of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global alcohol action plan was released in June 2021, people were quick to take to social media to voice their criticism of a particular sentence in it. I, too, felt the scarlet indignation that other women, people with uteruses, felt. At the time, this criticism seemed emboldening, because we came together to say it’s time that the public health arena come to terms with its particular, insidious brand of sexism. But now that it’s mid-July and a couple of national long weekends are behind us, the glittering haze around this particular discourse has faded, leaving behind a murky gleam — what were we actually saying with our criticism? Could we have taken a more nuanced approach?
The aim of the drafted plan is to work in a more concerted way toward reducing the harmful use of alcohol, especially among vulnerable groups. “Appropriate attention should be given to prevention of the initiation of drinking among children and adolescents, prevention of drinking among pregnant women and women of childbearing age, and protection of people from pressures to drink, especially in societies with high levels of alcohol consumption where heavy drinkers are encouraged to drink even more,” the notorious sentence in the plan reads.
“We are more than incubators, after all, and it’s time that some in the medical field stop using methods and language that convey that they only value people with uteruses insofar as they contain the potential to reproduce.”
When this plan was released in mid-June, many took the bit about people of childbearing age to be an outright ban rather than a recommendation. Headlines cited fury against the WHO for telling “women of childbearing age” not to drink. The criticism we levelled out was much in the vein of, “I will drink as much as I like, thank you very much.” We were angered by the plan because it told us what we ought and ought not to put in our bodies based solely on a potential to bear children. We are more than incubators, after all, and it’s time that some in the medical field stop using methods and language that convey that they only value people with uteruses insofar as they can have babies.
But after some thinking — rethinking — I had to ask myself, what right am I actually fighting for here? Certainly, an entity such as the WHO should be taken to task for sexism and for upholding dated stereotypes through dietary proscriptions, but is advocating for my right to consume as much alcohol as I want really the healthiest way to bring about the substantial and meaningful change needed here? After all, alcohol is a highly addictive drug.
Behavioural and data scientist Pragya Arwal tweeted about how research papers are notoriously unbalanced when it comes to presenting data on gendered bodies, and thereby implicitly feed into societal gender roles and stereotypes. For example, even as the WHO plan talks about how alcohol dependence impacts 2.6 per cent of adults internationally, it spends noticeably little time talking specifically about the detrimental effects of alcohol on sperm quality — the term “men” appears only twice in the plan. In light of this, it seems like the plan is policing women’s bodies specifically.
This is all to say, we have a right to be angry at the methodology of this plan, but the way that many of us formulated our disapproval has been questionable. In other words, if alcohol is bad for our bodies, why are so many of us passionately defending our right to consume it?
Perhaps many responded by saying they have a right to drink as much as they like as a trauma response of sorts: women’s consumption of alcohol, especially in public, has always been tricky under patriarchy. An Atlantic article from 2020 quotes art history professor Lisa Jacobson. “Throughout modern history, it’s been ‘more culturally problematic for women to be drunk than men, because it’s a violation of all sorts of notions of femininity,’ Jacobson said. On top of that, mothering is known universally to be a hugely important job, one that doesn’t end every day at 5 p.m. or offer any time off. ‘Moms are never off the clock,’ Jacobson said, which means any drinking a mother does could, to a critical eye, be seen as drinking on the job.”
In light of this, I would argue that the vigorous response against the single and oft-quoted statement from the WHO plan has more to do with freedom of choice than drinking alcohol itself, but this point can get overshadowed by the actual consumption of alcohol, which comes clothed in jokes and memes. For example, when you search for “alcohol” on TikTok, the top four videos feature women, two of which use the term “alcoholic” in jest.
I can’t help but wonder whether doing as men do, especially drinking as prolifically as they do, is powerful — is being like men under patriarchy freedom? Or is it freedom when we question the desires that patriarchy and capitalism (particularly Big Alcohol) inculcate in us from an early age?
“Is doing as men do, especially drinking as prolifically as they do, powerful? Is being like men under patriarchy freedom? Or is it freedom when we question the desires that patriarchy and capitalism (particularly Big Alcohol) inculcate in us from an early age? ”
Abby Goldstein is the Associate Chair of Applied Psychology and Human Development at University of Toronto. She says that the response from women against WHO’s plan is weighty with meaning. “In general, we as a society are driven to protect our own rights to make choices for ourselves,” she says. “And I think historically, women have had that right taken away from them, the right to make decisions about their own bodies. And the idea that others should be making those choices for women has always been problematic and continues to be problematic.”
Our response, whether particularly about women having the right to drink, or about the right to choose what we do with our bodies, “is really historically embedded in a society where women's rights to choose what's best for them has been taken away,” Goldstein says. “And there is concern about having that continue on, and so where women are concerned, it is important for them to be able to know that their choices about how to navigate their own bodies is left to them, and isn't being put upon them by other decision makers.”
Goldstein stresses the importance of informed decision making.
There is a danger that comes with demonstrating (on social media) how much alcohol we consume, even when this demonstration is a response to a sexist report. The effects of how normalised alcohol has become in our culture can be seen in recent studies.
“Historically, women have had that right [to make choices for themselves] taken away from them, the right to make decisions about their own bodies. And the idea that others should be making those choices for women has always been problematic and continues to be problematic.”
Researchers at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) found that, in 2020, alcohol could be linked to “thousands of cancer cases” in Canada, with alcohol being linked to 24 per cent of breast cancer cases in Canada. Data is also emerging steadily about the impact that Covid-19 has had on women’s mental health and substance use and abuse. A piece in Harvard Health Publishing notes that Covid-19 has created unique psychological stresses for women that have led to them drinking much more than they did before the pandemic. The piece cites a study that found that “heavy drinking days” for women have gone up by 41 per cent over the past year; the same cannot be said for men.
I do not want to take the position of telling a person to stop drinking alcohol, but I would like to advocate for informed decision making, as Professor Goldstein does.
“Ultimately, it really is about women's right to choose what is reasonable for them in terms of their bodies, to make educated and informed choices,” Goldstein says. “I think the concern is more about to what extent there is good information that's being disseminated to women about making choices. And that's really where we want to be putting our efforts to really support good dissemination of [science-based] information, so that we can promote decision-making for individuals related to that science.”
Informed decision making starts with official bodies like the WHO putting out data and recommendations that aren’t biased, and that don’t focus on one type of body while glossing over another. We need data that talks about our bodies, all bodies, as they exist in the world.
