In Progress

Women’s history during the last quarter of the 20th century:
Arguably for the first time in United States history, women became visible as alcoholics during the 1970s. While American women who struggled with alcohol addiction always existed, for centuries they lived in a time that conceptualized challenges with alcohol as the prerogative of men. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, however, women increasingly claimed the identity of alcoholic and created their own paths to recovery that were often outside of the dominant paradigms. In so doing, they confronted the pervasive stereotypes that had been assigned to women with drinking problems and established gender and culturally specific recovery pathways.