We Need To Rethink How We Talk About Beer
The Gender Pint Gap: Revisited - Reflection Piece #1 of 3
“The UK beer industry used to actively offend women. Today, we just don’t talk to them.”
PHOTO: Laura Hadland
The brand new report from Dea Latis on women’s attitudes and behaviours towards beer in GB makes for a worrying if not unsurprising read.
2018’s Gender Pint Gap report should have been a wake-up call for the UK beer industry. It was ignoring women - 51% of UK population - sustaining a breeding ground for sexism, misogyny and harassment, and missing out on vast opportunities to capitalise on the spending power and influence that women have.
Those presenting it hoped it would serve enough evidence and create large enough waves across the beer industry that the issues highlighted in the report would be firmly addressed and change would ensue.
Covid was the curveball that affected everything. In 2021 The World Economic Forum reported that the pandemic had pushed back gender parity by a generation.
So where are we now? This is some of the first data of its kind that reflects back on pre-Covid data to evidence a 2024 comparison.
Having been part of the report project team, I’ve had access to this data for a while. It would therefore be remiss of me to not share my personal response to the new findings and insights.
This is the first in a series of reflection pieces, and here I focus on four key areas of insight from the new data.
Let’s dig in.
1. Only 14% of women in GB drink beer weekly (compared to 50% of men), a 3% drop since 2018.
The first thing that hits hard is that nothing has changed. The big, glaring stat that popped and then has stuck around from the 2018 Gender Pint Gap was that only 17% of women in the UK said they drank beer regularly, which was one of the lowest percentages in the world. This stat made its way onto many presentations and into conversations across the various campaigns for more women in UK beer.
And now, despite the alarm bells from the 2018 report and subsequent communications campaign, we remain dozing in essentially the same situation, with a drop from 17% to 14% for women, and a relative drop from 53% to 50% for men. The gap is exactly the same as it was in 2018 when we were first shocked.
Worse still, back in 2018 the point was made that things hadn’t really changed at all since the similar research undertaken back in 2009, when The Bittersweet Partnership, funded by Molson Coors, stated that only 13% of beer consumed in the UK can be attributed to women (compared to 44% in Spain and 61% in Turkey).
So why do women continue to turn their backs to beer?
2. Beer advertising remains a key barrier for women.
The UK beer industry used to actively offend women. Today, we just don’t talk to them.
It would be easy to forget the progress made in this area, but I think it’s important to acknowledge first off that a lot has changed already. We can’t stop now. In the latest survey, 82% of women strongly agreed or tended to agree that beer advertising was targeted at men - and almost 75% of men were of the same opinion.
We’ve largely tackled the urgent changes needed around sexist beer names and pump clips. This has been stamped out (mostly) thanks to a widespread clampdown from people like CAMRA and campaigning from high profile individuals like Jaega Wise
This is a good start, but it has to only be the start. It’s time for the next bit of work now.
We still need lots more representation of women in beer advertising. Where are they? They are creeping in but it feels so slow, and I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve rolled my eyes at beer promos featuring groups of white men. Most of the time they look so similar, I have to look twice and check that it's not all the same guy, duplicated by a rampant AI that’s been trained on - well, existing beer marketing.
The usual response here is ‘there were no women there’, which can politely be referred to as “telling on yourself”. If you don’t have enough women in your company (or the company you are working with) to feature diversity in your promo, that is the real problem. This needs to be acknowledged and addressed as a root cause.
We need those responsible for beer advertising to get some perspective and be mindful about the fact that most UK breweries are still hugely male dominated (more on that in the next piece). Know that, without proper consideration, we construct our marketing in a way that is aimed at our existing majority. It becomes an echo chamber, and I believe that is where a lot of beer still exists; we have to apply mindful decision-making to these processes to reach new people.
I believe we also need to address the connection between beer and sport, and move away from sport being treated like it's something that only men like to do. The rise of the Lionesses - as one high-profile example - has given beer an opportunity to unlock a whole new type of customer, and it’s only going to continue in the same direction. Why would any brewery or venue turn that opportunity away?
Ultimately, if more women work in breweries, bars and other beer industry roles, the advertising will shift. The problem is at the core - truly - and we have to get women into roles where they have leadership responsibilities and the autonomy to make key decisions and become role models that create and inspire positive change. This is still not happening anywhere near enough to shift the needle.
PHOTO: Fern Dalton
3. 70% of women perceive beer as highly calorific with negative health implications.
Calorific content featured strongly in the 2018 report as one of the top three barriers to women drinking beer, and continues to be high up the list.
Of course some of this is pure myth, driven by “beer being a man’s drink” for so long and the associated image of pint-swilling, beer-belly-laden men who appear not to care about their health nor appearance. We were fighting these myths even before the health of the nation was thrown into the spotlight.
Since Covid, health-driven choices have become increasingly prevalent and to date, the beer industry hasn’t really done anything to address this and respond. Can we really afford to sit back and watch beer sales dip as the alcohol-free category offers the most important beacon possible by addressing health drivers and experiencing exponential growth? And I’m definitely not saying all beer should be alcohol-free, but we can certainly better understand what influences modern consumers and learn lessons from the success of brands in this space to find some solutions.
We know that a lot of the behaviours and perspectives of women are driven by society's unhealthy obsession with beauty standards and everyone - frequently via the medium of internet or newspaper column - having an opinion on how women should behave, look, and exist. Regardless of this, the bottom line is that women are put off by the age-old image beer has. It’s almost irrelevant why.
We need to improve the image of beer. It needs a rebrand.
A 250ml glass of 13% wine actually contains more calories than a pint of 4% beer. So, why is it that women go for wine thinking it is a more suitable choice for them? Well, wine is presented as a gender-neutral (mostly) drink with an often stylish image - think elegant glassware, fancy restaurants, wine cellars in posh houses, and exotic European provenance. It’s considered to be an upper class drink, and is therefore aspirational. It’s an image women are bought into - calories aside.
Beer needs to work really hard to stride this gap. With working class roots, we are addressing a class and gender chasm as well as trying to shake a negative and unhealthy image.
It’s interesting to me that in places like the US where 26% of women regularly drink beer (and in Italy it’s 60%), there isn’t the same troublesome backstory to stifle the image. Drinking cultures across the globe differ hugely and across Europe, beer is served in stemmed glassware and sipped in restaurants as standard - and so unsurprisingly more women choose it over other options. We need to look to Europe for some rebrand tips. We have a much bigger wall to climb and we really do need to try.
I’ve also noticed that the alcohol-free brands are often making a point on their products about things like ‘natural ingredients’ and calorie counts. As we become more health conscious as a society, this makes sense, but perhaps it’s even more appealing to women who, on the whole, do tend to be more calorie conscious.
In the report itself, Laura Willoughby, co-founder of Club Soda says: “An alcohol-free beer is truly an amazing drink. Without the alcohol, beer is, in most cases, one of the healthiest things you can drink - no added sugar, low in calories, hydrating, and full of vitamin B12.”
The thing is, it might be argued that alcohol-free beer is generally only appealing to people who already like beer but want less or no booze, and so we still need to do the front-end work to get women to embrace beer in the first place.
4. The way beer is presented and served is problematic for many women.
One of the things Dea Latis founder, Annabel Smith, talks about is so much ‘beer speak’ revolving around that word; pint. This is a word that is also rooted into the ‘lad culture’ in the UK that contributes to beer’s negative image.
Women especially find the prospect of a liquid served in such volume off-putting. Now, you and I might know that beer comes in a range of different sizes, but not everyone does, and the pint is still a prevalent feature in both the language and presentation of beer.
The Beer Glass Project by Women On Tap CIC in 2020 was a campaign to put beer glassware in the spotlight. PHOTO: Claire McClean
Annabel suggests we should think about replacing the word with ‘glass of beer’, and how this instantly changes what you visualise.
We’re back to the earlier comment about wine; marketing is incredibly powerful, and some of the greatest rebranding work has been seen when a negative image is turned on its head to win hearts and minds (and pounds) en masse. It happens all the time.
If I can turn your attention to gin, briefly. This is a spirit that has been revived after being referred to as “mother’s ruin” for so long; it was cheap as chips and swigged in large volumes by “the poor” with devastating health consequences. Yet today gin has become one of the top drinks chosen in the UK, with the market worth an estimated £2bn. Now that’s quite some turnaround.
Among the reasons for this are the move towards choosing craft and artisanal options, an upsurge in cocktails, the health-conscious looking for a lighter choice, people drinking less but looking for premium quality, and we can’t ignore the influence of glassware, botanicals and the general ‘theatre’ with which gin is now associated. All of this sits within the headline title of a ‘rebrand’, and marketing has played a huge role.
It could be said that if gin can turn around in this way, shaking off such a problematic past to become an aspiration and a lifestyle choice, so can beer.
My belief is that being considered, mindful and intentional about glassware is an easy win. Look at places like Belgium, where brands have very specific, often stemmed glassware, and serving the beers in anything else is just unacceptable. It’s not only women who appreciate more elegant drinking vessels either - I believe more men would also choose beer if they were consistently told that it isn’t only available in pints. It’s a win-win.
The British pint is going nowhere. Personally, I love a pint but I also know that not all modern beer belongs in that measure, and that knowing which beer to drink in what way and why, is utterly confusing to most people. This is why lager is by far the most popular choice of beer style (for more than a third of those surveyed) - because it’s easy to order and know what you’re getting; it’s arguably often more of a default than a preference.
We need to upgrade and expand the beer experience to give more people a greater understanding and choice - and this goes way beyond just having a large amount of different beers available on the bar. This should include a new way of thinking that considers marketing, education, and presentation.
In doing this, we can rebrand beer and build a new image for UK beer that is more appealing to a broader range of preferences and better aligns with the motivations of modern day society. Then the industry can truly thrive.
Read The Gender Pint Gap: Revisited. It features a 10-point manifesto, offering a practical guide to drive change.
Next in this series - Beer Workplaces Are Failing Women
This article is a 3-part series. Part two can be found above and part three - And Another Thing - will be released Friday 31st May.