How Women Should Navigate the Drinking Culture

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There are some industry cultures that endorse a drinking culture – frequently getting together after work to drink. Coming from one such industry I understand how it normalizes alcoholism and creates problems for women.

Many women and women’s organization encourage women to participate in this culture in order to get ahead. However, my been-there, dealt-with-that, opinion is that women must be very careful any time they are around men who drinking.

Personally, I’m not much of a drinker – one glass of wine is my limit. So, I’m not big into getting together 3-4 nights a week after work for drinks. Frankly, I have better things to do with my time. And that is the first lesson about men who participate in the drinking culture – they don’t have a life outside of work.

They don’t have a family or girlfriend they want to get home to. They don’t have a dog or even a hamster to take care of. They don’t go to the gym to work out, play a sport or have a hobby. Sadly, work is their life because it is their escape from the rest of their life. Recently separated or divorced men are often the ring leaders of getting the guys together after work so they don’t have to go home to a small, empty apartment.

Women are mistakenly encouraged to go out with the guys for the social bonding that will build relationships and advance our careers. But how much career advancement do we get from our peers? Very little.

We are also told we need to participate if our boss or management is going because it is a great time to pitch your ideas and get face-time.

No it isn’t.

When men leave work, they leave work. At the bar they will discuss work but in the form of war stories. They won’t be solving any workplace issues or making business decisions. The only tangible value of going out with the guys is that we can pick up on tidbits of useful information – we can find out who worked on what and how they screwed up. Those could be opportunities for us to assert ourselves – if we remain sober and clear headed enough to mine those gold nuggets of information. But this is where we will run into problems – when we are out with the guys, we will be pressured to drink, a lot.

The guys will offer to buy you drinks; they will buy you drinks even if you decline. They will pressure you to keep up with them and it is easy to fall to the pressure unless you own your limits.

As I said I am not much of a drinker and I proudly declare it. Call me a light-weight. Make me the Designated Driver. The more pressure that is put on me to drink the more of I proudly I declare – to the entire bar – that I am a genuine light-weight. Poke fun at me for my limits – I will accept the laughter at my expense because I know that the ability to laugh at myself is 100 times more important to bonding with the guys than how much or how often I drink.

I also limit my drinking for my own safety.

Women are encouraged to go out drinking with their male colleagues to become “one of the guys.” But when there is a lot of drinking going on we must always remember that this is when we ARE NOT one of the guys.

We all know what people are like when they get drunk. And while I like to talk about how men and women are equal and how women have a mental strength, we lose our edge when we get intoxicated. This gives men who are physically stronger an advantage and makes us vulnerable. A woman who gets drunk in the presence of men puts herself in a dangerous situation.

This situation is exponentially magnified when we are traveling out of town with the guys.

There is a saying: “What happens out of town, stays out of town.” This is men’s permission slip to behave badly in ways we never see them do at home. The nice family man whose family hangs out with your family is suddenly hitting on you. Or he’s in the “gentlemen’s club” disrespecting his wife with his activities.

The bottom line is that when you go out of town for the first time with men, trust no one. Act like prudish Little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. Don’t tell anyone your hotel room number. Go to dinner with the guys but limit your drinks. After dinner, you can hang out with the guys for a bit but beware of colleagues getting too friendly and asking lots of personal questions. As soon as they do err on the side of caution and go to bed early. Don’t accept offers to walk you to your room. And if you get a knock on your door in the middle of the night by one of your colleagues, don’t answer it. Don’t even respond.

Set boundaries and make each man earn your trust.

They understand what you are doing and they get it. Most of the men will rise to the standards you set so you can trust them. They will then be your protectors from the few men you cannot trust.

I used to travel extensively and be the only woman. When I worked on a project out of town, my company decided to rent two-bedroom apartments instead of hotel rooms. As the only woman I shared an apartment with two different male colleagues, both of whom I trusted implicitly – but they earned my trust first.

I also had a boss who I traveled with a lot who loved martinis. I love green olives. So I ordered a glass of wine and he ordered his martinis with extra olives for me. It became our thing.

And yes, there have been occasions when I had too much to drink and had a blast with some of my colleagues. But again, the only men present were the ones I trusted beyond a shadow of a doubt.

As women we can be one of the guys but only in a safe environment. Too often women in their efforts to be equal, act like one of the guys, forgetting the obvious differences. They trust all men and make men earn distrust. But by the time the distrust is earned there was an incident – it’s too late and there are regrets.

Our equality is not about acting the same as men. It is about exercising our inherent power to influence men. We set the standards for acceptable behavior around us and only trust the men who prove they can rise to our standard and be our equal.