Production of women alcoholism in medical discourse

Abstract

This article presents the analysis of a medical psychiatric discourse on women’s alcohol abuse. It shows the specific ways of including women into the scientific knowledge. The author conducts discourse analysis and concludes that addressing the question of women’s alcohol abuse, the medicine «adds» the existing physiological information for women to a model of alcoholism that is made for men. Moreover, if a man is said to be an alcoholic, he is sometimes pictured as just a «marginal person» that lives in our society, whereas a woman is shown as an addict, the triple discrediting codes appear: «a dependent woman» is codified as an alcoholic; as a woman; as a violator of both gender canons and social norms. It is depicted even far more viciously in mass-media, where a «woman-alcoholic» is proclaimed to be a threat for the present and the future of the society.