Part four: Women and alcohol in an Indian settlement

Abstract

The author describes two aspects of alcohol in the lives of the women in a Nevada Indian settlement: their drinking behavior and their techniques for coping with men's drinking. In a folk taxonomy, informants identified five styles of drinking behavior practiced by women, and they classified each adult female into one of these styles. The behavior associated with each drinking style is described and incidence rates are presented. A majority of the women seldom, if ever, drink; most of the women who drink practice one of the four styles classified by informants as “can handle it,” indicating the inappropriateness of applying the drunken Indian stereotype to the women of this Settlement. The women's methods for coping with men's drinking are then described. It is suggested that the indirect effects of alcohol on women greatly overshadow the direct ones and that their methods for dealing with the effects of men's alcohol use probably deserve even more attention than women's drinking.