Today beer, wine and spirits are very much male-dominated. Yet, women have played a major role in the production and improvement of beer, wine and spirits throughout history. Even the temperance movement in the United States contributed to the recognition of political women’s rights and the right to vote. But it has been a long and winding road, and many challenges remain to empower women in the alcoholic beverages sector.
Names like Maria the Jewess, Hildegard of Bingen, the Widow Clicquot, Helen and Elizabeth Cumming, Catherine Spears Frye Carpenter, Mary Dowling, Marjorie “Margie” Samuels, Bessie Williamson, Rita Taketsuru (whose original name was Jessie “Rita” Roberta Cowan), Mariane Eaves, Lorena Vásquez, and Laura Catena are just a few of the distinguished women who have made substantial contributions to the development of wine and spirits. There are also many anonymous women whose work and contributions to farming, harvesting and production of various types of grains and grapes for alcoholic beverages have made possible for the sector to exist.
Beer, to name just one example, was a staple food in most European households and overseas territories since ancient times. This was because beer was an affordable way to consume and preserve grains. For the working class, beer was an important source of nutrients, rich in carbohydrates and proteins. Since the beverage was such a common part of the average person's diet, fermentation was, for many women, one of their regular domestic tasks, empowering them at least until the time of the Holy Inquisition and the arrival of the Industrial Revolution.
In the 16th century, the financial success of beer production led to the marginalization of women in its brewing process, resulting in the creation of guilds in which female participation was prohibited. However, enterprising women managed to circumvent this by enabling their brothers and husbands to join the guilds so they could continue developing production.
However, there was another setback: between 1500 and 1660, when the Holy Inquisition came into play: women who produced spirits and beer became easy targets and were tried as witches. The tools they possessed for brewing beer, fermentation, and other related activities were used as evidence against them, and breweries were portrayed as being run by pagan, evil, grotesque people, and so on. Between 50,000 and 80,000 women in Europe and the Americas were executed, establishing a stigma surrounding the relationship between women and alcohol that persists today. Images such as brooms—a symbol used to identify distilleries—cats—which were always present in distilleries to scare away rodents—and hats, which are often used to characterize witches, were part of the women's attire so they could be identified by shoppers in the crowded markets.
Empowered women in England, Ireland, and the rest of the world faced moralistic religious premises that established strict norms based on gender considerations, the main argument being the condemnation of witchcraft. Many men, seeking to control the lucrative beer production, appeared in trials and testified accusing women of practicing sorcery, knowing that if women were eliminated or removed from production, they would benefit as master brewers—which they were not, or at least not in terms of the expertise the women possessed at that time. Conservative ideas prevailed over the reasoning that women should spend more time caring for children, given that beer production demanded enormous labor and long hours. Ideas such as the notion that women who worked in brewing would remain spinsters also spread.
The impact of the events described has been lasting in the sector. Today, beer production is dominated by men, most of whom preside over the world's largest brewing companies. In fact, not a single woman holds a leadership position among the world's 10 largest brewing corporations. The case of Mexico’s María Asunción Aramburuzabala, who has been the wealthiest woman in the country—and remains in the top 10—seems exceptional. Heir to Grupo Modelo, succeeding her father, she has also considerably diversified her investments, venturing into technology companies, real estate, and others, having moved away from beer production after the company's sale in 2013. Of course, it is no small feat that she is the first woman on the board of directors of the Mexican Stock Exchange.
It's also necessary to understand the role of the Industrial Revolution, which played a part in removing women from an activity that became more mechanized and was left in the hands of men in urban areas. In any case, to honor women's historical contribution to brewing, Miller beer released a special edition of its Miller Lite in 2022 with the slogan "There's no beer without women."
Despite the rise and fall of women in beer and spirits production, their presence never disappeared. Take the case of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin (1777-1866) and several other women known as the Champagne widows, who not only had to take the reins of their deceased husbands' businesses but also steered them in new directions. This was certainly due to many factors: men's shorter life expectancy compared to women's, the fact that men fought in various conflicts and perished, but above all, the accumulated knowledge of their wives regarding how to create appealing products, with a keen business and market vision. This was not an accident: women, while responsible for caring for their families, had to manage existing resources to meet household needs. This, which is something so commonplace, will prove to be key in the management of champagne-producing companies amidst economic crises, armed conflicts, foreign invasions, and a long etcetera.
While Champagne owes much to the contributions of prominent men like Dom Pierre Pérignon himself, it is thanks to remarkable women—mostly widows, interestingly enough—that the greatest and most significant innovations, widely recognized throughout the wine world, have been made. It's not that Champagne breeds widowhood. Rather, it's the many prominent businesswomen and visionaries involved in Champagne production who, after being widowed, had to take over their deceased husbands' businesses, making risky decisions that ultimately proved successful.
Some well-known names include: the Widow Clicquot, Louise Pommery, Mathilde Émilie Perrier, Camille Olry Roederer, Lily Bollinger, and, in the case of Spain, Dolors Sala Vive, to name a few. They didn't all emerge at the same time. Some were more pioneering than others. The Widow Clicquot, for example, navigated the challenging Napoleonic Wars. Louise Pommery was the chronological successor to the Champagne Lady. Mathilde Émilie Perrier's era was marked by the First World War, whose consequences were brutal for her company. Camille Olry-Roederer's context encompassed both World Wars and the Great Depression of 1929. And what can be said of Lily Bollinger, who took charge of the company in 1941 when Adolf Hitler invaded France and the Nazis looted the region's Champagne. In the case of Dolors Sala Vivé, after the Spanish Civil War, her son and husband were murdered, and she had to carry on the business of one of the most renowned Cava producers. All widows proved audacious and resilient.
Just as there have been—fortunately—many women who have contributed to the production of beer, champagne, tequila, rum, whiskey, and other spirits —not forgetting the women producers, those who harvest, those who work directly in production, marketing, and so on—many women also embraced the prohibition of alcohol due to its effects on families, domestic violence, household income, and vandalism and crime. It is important to remember that the pro-prohibition movements, especially in the United States, were crucial in advancing feminism and securing women's suffrage.
Women were instrumental in securing the passage of the Volstead Act, which was in effect from 1920 to 1933 in the US, through women’s organizations such as the Women Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti-Saloon League (ASL). Ironically, Prohibition encouraged more women to drink in speakeasies, but it also granted them autonomy, political visibility, and new leadership opportunities, such as the right to vote. In fact, the Eighteenth Amendment was followed by the Nineteenth, passed on June 4, 1919, and effective August 18, 1920, which states: “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
That said, in Western societies, alcohol is still very much male-dominated. What about nonwestern cultures? The case of China is of particular interest. Traditional beverages in the country, such as fermented beverages made from cereals such as huangjiu or yellow wine or baijiu or white wine, or even beverages such as shejiu or snake wine plus putaojiu or grape juice wine, have been dominated by men, while in the current century wine has been embraced by women as a lifestyle choice and a sophisticated alternative. Women have also driven the development of business models related to wine tourism. Women possess qualities such as meticulousness, intuition, patience, and artistic sensibility that are considered essential for producing high-quality wines.
One characteristic of the renewal underway in the Chinese wine sector is the presence of young female entrepreneurs and winemakers, marking what is seen as a feminization of the new Chinese wine route. In contrast, while in the West the production of alcoholic beverages, as previously explained, is heavily male-dominated, in China, because the sector is relatively new in its current form, women do not face gender barriers, for example, when studying abroad and returning to the Asian giant to found and manage companies. In the West, particularly in Europe and America, many companies pass on leadership to family members, who are mostly men—which is the case of Laura Catena in Argentina, just to mention a prominent figure.
Young, professional women, particularly those from Generation Z, are driving both retail and online sales. Women are also more open to experimentation, opting for red wines for their health benefits, as well as sparkling and rosé wines to try new things. Furthermore, women are dominating modern marketing and education, with figures like Natalie Wang, regarding news platforms on the subject, and internationally renowned sommeliers such as the acclaimed Della Tang being prominent examples. This does not mean that women have achieved the gender equality and empowerment that corresponds to their demographic, political, economic, and cultural importance. But China shows an encouraging process and important changes are on the way there and elsewhere.
Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned by María Cristina Rosas, a professor and researcher in the faculty of political and social sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. The column appears in The Rio Grande Guardian International News Service with the permission of the author. Rosas can be reached via email at: mcrosas@prodigy.net.mx
